


The ones that come after

by taizi



Category: Natsume Yuujinchou | Natsume's Book of Friends
Genre: Gen, about the side characters i love that no one wants to read a series of oneshots about, gratuitous amounts of nishimura, natsume protection squad, welcome to a series of oneshots
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-21
Updated: 2018-10-21
Packaged: 2018-11-03 08:00:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 45
Words: 38,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10963047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taizi/pseuds/taizi
Summary: “You’re one of us,” Kitamoto says, toasting Shibata with his own drink.“Is this some sort of weird club I’m not aware of?” Natsume says dryly.“Yes,” everyone else says in perfect unison, followed by Tanuma’s helpful, “Just drink your tea.”





	1. make up for it

**Author's Note:**

> a collection of oneshots about all the good people who come into natsume's life after all the bad

Katsumi is used to being _popular_ with girls. So when he introduces himself to the bright-eyed brunette by the school gate, he’s entirely unprepared for the way her face goes cold and closed. 

It’s something like a window slamming shut bare inches away from prone fingertips, and Katsumi very barely manages not to take a step back in face of the very immediate dislike.

“I, um,” he flounders, then rallies with what he hopes is a charming smile. “I’m here to see Natsume? Uh, Natsume Takashi?”

The girl stands in front of him with narrow eyes in an otherwise friendly face, arms folded, like some kind of security guard. When she turns away, its only to ask her curly-haired companion to please go and get someone called Nishimura. 

But I asked for _Natsume,_ Katsumi protests inwardly, without the nerve to say it out loud. This town is so _backwards_. 

A bright, eager voice fills the school grounds whole moments before its owner comes into view. “Taki? What’s up? Tsuji said you wanted to see –  _You!”_

Katsumi is already wincing into the abrupt silence when Nishimura draws up short. He recognizes Nishimura from that first time he came to see Natsume here what feels like _ages_ ago. He remembers the heated way Nishimura sprang to Natsume’s defense the second their conversation took a cold turn. The glaring girl seems to be a mutual friend. 

Great. 

But tagging along behind Nishimura is another familiar face, and it’s pleasant surprise that flits across Tanuma’s face when their eyes meet. 

“Oh, Shibata,” he says, coming a few extra steps forward. “You’re early, aren’t you?”

Relieved, Katsumi says, “ _Yes_ , I am, thank god you’re here Tanuma.”

The dark-eyed boy seems to be very barely not laughing at him. “Nishimura and Kitamoto actually told me and Taki all about you before we met,” he explains, and Katsumi watches some of the angry edges ease out of the other two students’ faces, just from the kind way Tanuma is smiling at him. “That’s why I was so eager to go along with Natsume when he went to visit you, you know, that time with the doll house.”

“Wait, you two have met?” Nishimura’s still scowling, but with a lot less volume. “You’ve all hung out together? _What_ doll house?” 

Taki, on the other hand, has drifted to stand by Tanuma’s shoulder, and her dislike has shifted into something closer to curiosity. She really takes his opinion into account, Katsumi realizes, trying to get a feel for their dynamics. They all seem to. Is it a Natsume thing, or is Tanuma really just that reliable?

“We have met,” Katsumi answers belatedly, when he realizes Tanuma isn’t rude enough to speak for him from two feet away. Prudently ignoring the doll house question, he goes on, “I’m actually supposed to meet him this afternoon, for um – a project? But my extracurriculars were canceled, so I was free much sooner than I thought.”

Nishimura’s frown doesn’t budge an inch. Taki seems swayed by Tanuma’s good opinion of him – and Katsumi is going to ask him _all_ about that over dinner tonight, he really truly is – but Nishimura bites out, “The look on Natsume’s face when you showed up that day made me want to hit you. And I don’t usually want to hit people. But you were a real jerk, you know that?”

Katsumi does know that, actually. Thinking back on the way he acted fills his stomach with a heavy, sinking mixture of guilt and shame, so he does his best not to. 

“We’re friends now,” is what he says aloud, maybe a little too sharply. “I hurt him before, I know I did. But I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t want to make up for it.”

And with that, Taki relents completely, and even smiles at him – a small gesture, but he’ll _take_ it. Nishimura looks unconvinced, but a little less like he’s about to start a fight, and it’s about that time that Natsume finds them – with  _that cat_ trotting at his heels, and _really_ , he brings it to _school?_

“You’re _early,_ Shibata, _”_ Natsume says by way of greeting, and his voice is sharp with annoyance but playfully so, completely without any unhappy edges. Katsumi grins like a knee-jerk reaction and plants his hands on his hips.

“Don’t pretend like you didn’t _miss_ me, Natsume. Not after I came all this way for you.”

“You came all this way for Touko-san’s cooking,” comes the dry reply. “Don’t pretend otherwise, it’s demeaning to us both.” His expression gentles when he looks at Nishimura and Taki, and his sarcastic mouth forms a sweet smile when he bids them both goodbye. “And don’t worry, I’m taking this one with me,” he adds, jerking lightly on the strap of Katsumi’s bookbag as he passes him by. 

Tanuma falls into step with them, looking equal parts patient with and amused by the animated bickering that picks up between Katsumi and Natsume within moments of their prolonged proximity. 

Their friendship is a lot different, Katsumi thinks, than the friendships he saw back there. He thinks maybe it would be nice to be on the receiving end of more of those gentle smiles Natsume is capable of. His heart is set on the sun-bright prospect of earning them fairly. 

He takes a moment to take it all in – walking with Natsume down an old country road, surrounded on all sides by blooming lotuses, the other boy’s cat a heavy weight in his arms. Tanuma’s hand and Natsume’s brush with every other step, and Natsume’s eyes are bright when he teases Katsumi about his crooked tie, and Katsumi thinks those friends of his – Taki and Nishimura and whoever else – are right to defend him so fiercely. 

He has seen the kind of trouble that follows his friend, the kind of trouble no one believed he was in when they were children, the kind of trouble he was never, ever rescued from – and resolve settles somewhere in the back of his heart. 

So many people have been cruel to Natsume, and Katsumi is one of them. But they aren’t here anymore, and Katsumi meant what he said – he wouldn’t be here, either, if he didn’t really, really want to make up for it.


	2. whether you like it or not

“Na–tsu–me,” Nishimura says too brightly. “I have a question for you!”

Sensing danger, Natsume lifts his aching head slowly and eyes his classmate with all the wariness he deserves. “What is it?”

“Well, I was just wondering why you told Touko-san you didn’t have a fever,” he says, still oozing with that false sense of cheer, “when it’s pretty obvious that you _do?”_

“Nishimura,” he starts, realizing too late where this is going. Nishimura doesn’t give ground.

“I get the feeling that whatever you’re about to say _isn’t_ some variation of ‘you’re so right, Nishimura, and I was so wrong!’ so I don’t really wanna hear it.”

“Since when are you Class Two’s mother hen?” another student asks with a grin. Her glance at Natsume is worried, though, because _yeah,_ he looks _that bad._ Honestly, who was he trying to kid?

“Since sensei had Tsuji go run an errand,” he replies airily, waving a hand. “Natsume, seriously. Let me take you to the nurse’s station.”

“I’m _fine,”_ he says – unconvincingly, since it comes out more of a wheeze. “The school day is half over, anyway, so – “

“So it doesn’t matter as much if you just take it easy.” Nishimura softens despite himself, leaning over to feel Natsume’s forehead with the back of his hand. “I mean – you’re kinda scaring me, you know? What if your fever fries your brain, or you dehydrate and pass out, or – “

“Nishimura,” Natsume says again, wearily, “none of that’s going to happen.”

“You’re so sick you can’t sit up straight,” he shoots back. “And you’ll faint on a _good_ day! Sorry if I’m a little worried about you!”

His tone has Natsume lifting hooded eyes to meet his, and they’re hazy so it takes him a minute to parse the words – but then his brow wrinkles, and his mouth tugs into a frown, and he pushes himself up on his elbows from where he’d been draped bonelessly on top of his desk. 

“No, it’s not – “ he starts, and then loses the words. Frustrated with himself, he tries again. “It’s not that I don’t appreciate it. I just – I didn’t want you to worry in the first place. I take up so much of Touko-san and Shigeru-san’s time already, and you guys – “

Nishimura wants to shake him. As it is, he leans over and grabs Natsume by the shoulders, as hard as he dares.

“Don’t you think we worry _more_ when you push yourself too far without telling anyone and make yourself even _sicker?”_

“I know,” he mutters, “I know, Nishimura, you’re right.”

“I know I’m right,” he replies smartly. “Are you ready to go to the nurse’s station?”

Because Natsume is probably the most stubborn person alive, his answer is a glance to the side, toward the window, and no verbal response. Nishimura shakes his head. 

“I thought so. That’s why I called in reinforcements.” 

“Nishimura, you _didn’t – “_

“If you won’t listen to me, I have no choice,” Nishimura says, spreading his hands apologetically. But he isn’t very apologetic at all, and it probably shows on his face if Natsume’s scowl is anything to go by. “Hey, you played yourself. You should’ve just come along nice and easy.”

The classroom door rattles open, and Tanuma’s framed in the doorway for all of a second. His eyes find Natsume across the room almost instantly, and his expression morphs into one it’s almost hard to look at. 

Resigned, Natsume stands and starts packing his bookbag. Tanuma lifts it out of his hands before he can string it over his shoulder, dark eyes equal parts gentle and steely, and looks ready to frogmarch Natsume down the hall if it comes to that, which is precisely what Nishimura was counting on. 

“This is bullying,” Natsume remarks dryly. His voice is hoarse and his eyes are overbright, but he still manages to sound cheeky. He’d manage to sound cheeky on his deathbed. Nishimura leans back in the chair he’d parked up by Natsume’s desk and beams at him, unrepentant.

“I’m comfortable with that. Maybe eventually you’ll learn to stay home and let your mom take care of you when you’re sick, and it won’t come to this anymore.”

Something self-conscious flits across Natsume’s expression, and if he wasn’t already flushed with fever, Nishimura would blame some of that high color in his cheeks on shame. 

It’s that, more than anything, that makes Nishimura lean over and catch him by the sleeve, tugging lightly. 

“We’re gonna take care of you whether you like it or not,” he says, not unkindly. “Just try to make it a little easier on everybody and _let_ us. At least once in awhile. Okay?”

And Natsume softens. Smiles faintly when Tanuma puts a hand on his shoulder. Says, “Okay.”

He’s absent from school for the next two days. Kitamoto calls the house and Touko-san assures him Natsume’s doing much better after a visit to the doctor. Nishimura misses him, but he still considers it a win. 


	3. worse days than this

It’s a sunny spring afternoon, and Shuuichi is alive and in one piece after another misadventure concerning a handful of aggressive yokai and a certain extremely taboo book in his young friend’s possession – and more importantly, Natsume, sitting beside him and bickering with the fat cat in his lap, is alive and in one piece, too.

They’re dirty and disheveled and Natsume seems to have a personal vendetta against allowing Shuuichi to buy him food, but they have certainly had worse days than this.

While Shuuichi is all but forcing an overpriced drink into Natsume’s hands, a little girl at the park no older than seven wanders away from her parents and over to the bench he and Natsume are resting on.

She considers them for a moment, then points without flinching at Hiiragi. 

“There’s a monster beside you,” she says plainly, and Natsume promptly chokes on his grudgingly accepted tea.

She’s a terribly cute thing, long brown hair hanging over her shoulders in twin braids, wide gray eyes reproachful. Her knees are dirty from the playground, her tiny white sandals scuffed at the toes, but the rest of her pale pink and yellow romper is spotless. 

“I saw you talking to her from over by the sandbox,” the little girl goes on guilelessly. “You should know better, you’re grown up. Even mama knows better, and she can’t even _see_ them.” 

“Teruko!” a harried-sounding young woman calls, and the little girl looks over her shoulder. “It’s time to go home!”

“I have to go now,” Teruko says primly. “But you shouldn’t be friends with the monsters. Mama says just because you can talk to them doesn’t mean they’ll be nice. Sometimes they’re mean, and papa has to chant a whole bunch to make them go away. It’s scary, so be careful.” 

She waits, studying the two of them very intently, until Shuuichi manages a nod. Then she leaves them with a sunny smile and runs back to join her parents and a slightly older brother who takes her hand when she reaches for him. 

It’s an interaction Shuuichi can’t be sure his exhausted mind didn’t just conjure up out of thin air. He sits silently for a moment or two to catalog his thoughts, and then decides it probably did happen.

“Aforementioned monster,” he says vaguely, with a curl of amusement at Hiiragi’s immediate, intense disdain, “do be so kind as to follow them –  _discreetly._ I want to know that little girl’s family name, but I don’t cause them any trouble.” 

With the shiki gone, Shuuichi risks a glance at his young companion. Natsume is silent, arms tight around his cat, fingers clutching the cup hard enough the plastic starts to cave in. 

“They love her,” Natsume says into the quiet. “She can see things they can’t, and they love her.” 

There’s a pain in the pit of Shuuichi’s chest like a knife driven straight through and turned. 

He knows only a little bit more than what Natsume has told him. With his resources, it wasn’t hard to work up a little history on the kid, and just by scratching the surface Shuuichi learned enough to make his stomach turn over. 

It’s hard to watch the kind, reckless, burdened boy stare after a happy family as though it’s something amazing – as though it should be impossible that someone like him could be so loved from the very beginning, and he doesn’t know how to reconcile what he’s just seen with what he already knows. 

“Do you think they could have loved me?” he asks slowly. “Or do you think – it was something I did wrong – “ 

Nyanko-sensei’s ears go flat against his head, eyes narrowed in disapproval. Shuuichi has to stomp down a similar reaction, and reach past it for softer compassion. 

“I think it’s irresponsible to hold a child up to an adult’s standards,” he says in a firm tone, so the words might make an impression. “You wouldn’t expect little Teruko to know as much as you do, would you?”

Natsume blinks, some of that edged dismay fading from his eyes, and Shuuichi nods.

“Of course you wouldn’t. She’s a child. And you were a child once, too.” _You still are,_ he knows better than to add aloud. “No matter what you did, whether it was right or wrong, when you were small and helpless it was your guardians’ duty to make you feel loved, and wanted, and safe. And if there was ever a time you _didn’t_ feel that, it was never your fault. It was theirs.” 

It’s as kind as he can bring himself to be in regards to the families that made most of Natsume’s childhood a living nightmare, and even those words were ash in his mouth. 

But Shuuichi thinks he might be willing to swallow _literal_ ash, if this is his reward. Natsume is slightly pink, eyes focused intently on the crushed cup in his hand, and that faint air of tragedy he unwittingly carries about him is all but gone.

“And while I’m sure the Fujiwaras don’t chant sutras for you like Teruko’s father allegedly does,” Shuuichi adds with a little humor, putting an arm around Natsume’s shoulders, “I think they would if they had any idea it might help you. Instead, they make you lunches and take you on trips. People who care show that they care in their own ways. It’s different for everyone, don’t you think?”

Natsume looks years younger when he smiles. For some reason, his eyes move to the cup in his hands, and his voice is strangely grateful when he says, “Maybe you’re right.”

“Of course I am. Now, come on. I’m in the mood for some takoyaki, my treat.” 

And where he expected another twenty minutes of rigorous debate – because Natsume so _hates_ when people spend money on him, even just a lunch here or a cold drink there – Natsume only sighs with good humor and helps Shuuichi to his feet. 

Hiiragi is annoyed she had to track them down to a restaurant several blocks away from where she left them, but Natsume is happy in his present company and no worse for wear after their encounter in the park, and Shuuichi has certainly had worse days than this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just watched the last ep of s6 and im so emotional


	4. an autumn-colored boy

When his cousin asks, “So how have things been with that boy around?” something bitter fills the back of Shigeru’s throat. 

It must show on his face, at least in part, because Katsuya’s wife lays a hand on his arm and scolds him, “That was rude. We talked about this on the way over.”

Of course they did, an uncharitable part of Shigeru’s heart remarks. Among his relatives, Takashi is a popular conversation topic, and very rarely in a kindly way.

The silence is something uncomfortable for a moment. Touko, pausing in refilling teacups, laughs airily – sitting back and pressing a delicate hand to the side of her face, as though simply caught off-guard by the question instead of perturbed by it. 

“Oh my. It’s been such a welcome change, hasn’t it, Shigeru? This house was built for a bigger family than two.” Her voice is remarkably warm when she adds, “Such a welcome change. I can’t even begin to tell you!”

And she really can’t begin – in much the same way Shigeru doesn’t have longer than a few seconds to enjoy the twin looks of stupefaction on Katsuya and Hiromi’s faces – because at that point the front door rattles open, and Takashi’s voice is calling “I’m home!”

Like a flower unfolding to spring, Touko rises to meet him without missing a beat. Takashi comes around the corner with a crooked smile on his face, an autumn-colored boy kissed by the summer heat and summer sun, and he carries some of that brightness with him into the room.

His cat is perched on his shoulder, his hands folded behind his back. For a brief moment, he’s the perfect picture of teenage mischief. Then his eyes stray farther into the room, and a door slams shut in his face. 

“Oh, I – I didn’t know we had company.” It’s amazing, in an awful way, how quickly he loses his footing. “I’m sorry – I brought – “

And a familiar face slams into Takashi’s shoulder, rocking him sideways. 

“We beat the rain!” Satoru crows enthusiastically. “We ran all the way here!”

Nyangoro huffs and leaps to the floor, trotting across the room to settle on the cushion by Shigeru’s knee with a put-upon sigh. Behind Takashi, Tooru, Kaname and Atsushi are milling comfortably in the doorway. They offer polite hellos, and Atsushi says “Sorry for intruding,” even as he expertly peels Satoru off of Takashi’s person. 

“Well, we _had_ to,” Tooru says practically, in response to Satoru’s remark. “Natsume had precious cargo, after all.”

Takashi’s face turns pink, and he shuffles in place. His shoulders curl a little tighter, as he hides whatever he’s holding more securely behind his back. 

Impossible fondness folds like fingers around Shigeru’s heart, expands beneath his breastbone like something physical. He can’t help smiling, the force of it crinkling his eyes, and teases, “It isn’t another cat, is it?”

Nyangoro huffs again. Takashi shakes his head quickly.

“No, it’s not – I mean, it’s nothing. I mean, it’s – “

“Dude, this is painful to listen to,” Satoru says, not unkindly. “Just give them to her.”

Touko tilts her head curiously, just a little bit like that crow of hers that hangs around the yard. Takashi glances towards Katsuya and Hiromi a little uncertainly, but then his eyes dart to Shigeru, sitting across the table from them. And there aren’t words for what it makes Shigeru feel, when his encouraging smile fills Takashi’s face with confidence. 

Takashi draws a bouquet of wildflowers from behind his back. 

“I thought you’d like them,” he says bravely. 

Shigeru can’t see his wife’s face, but he doesn’t need to. She makes a soft sound and hurries forward, and all the delight Shigeru can imagine in her expression is clear in her voice when she says, “Oh, they’re _beautiful!_ Where did you get them?”

“Some friends showed me where they grow, up on the mountain,” Takashi says, smiling widely. “You like them?”

Touko cradles his face in much the same way she cradles the flowers, a press of her fingers to the curve of his cheek, and says, “I love them. Thank you so much.”

Tooru follows Touko into the kitchen eagerly to find a suitable vase, and Kaname touches Takashi’s shoulder, grinning and saying, “You look like you just faced down a monster,” to which Takashi replies, “Oh, that would have been _much_ easier.” Atsushi catches Shigeru’s eye, and rubs the back of his head sheepishly.

“We didn’t mean to interrupt your visit. Nishimura insisted we all come as a group.”

Satoru squawks in outrage, presumably at being made the scapegoat, and Shigeru chuckles. “That’s quite all right. Do you have plans for the rest of the afternoon?”

They do, as it turns out – Satoru says “Natsume’s never gone beetle hunting!” in a way that indicates it’s a wrong he has set out to right at the first opportunity. Takashi rolls his eyes, but he looks at Satoru so fondly that Shigeru is nearly staggered by the difference in this boy and the one who first came to them nearly two years ago.

Touko insists on sending them off with iced tea and sandwiches and all three of the umbrellas from the rack by the door for the five of them to cluster under; and Takashi leaves with his cat in his arms and his friends by his side, and a soft smile for his foster parents that lingers in the room long after he’s gone. 

“Well,” Hiromi says, “I think _someone_ gave me the wrong idea about Takashi. He seems like a lovely boy. You know how long it’s been since anyone brought _me_ home flowers?” Katsuya has the good grace to look ashamed, rubbing a hand through his hair. Gentling with a smile, Hiromi adds, “His friends look like a good bunch, too. You must be so proud.”

When she takes her place beside him, Touko beams so brightly at Shigeru that he would be hard-pressed not to grin right back.

“Of course we are,” he says. He can’t think of anything in their life together more worthy of pride.


	5. the nature of change

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok for everyone who might have been wondering , this little prompt fill is where adachi comes from. he was in that nishinatsu series i wrote for Natsume Week, and he continues to pop up here and there, and i actually love him at this point, so,,,,

“Didn’t your class get a new student the other day?” Satoru asks when Kitamoto joins him during lunch. “I’ve seen him around, I think. What’s he like?”

Kitamoto’s eyes darken and his expression turns into something close to a  _glower_ in face of Satoru’s arguably innocent question  _–_ what was  _that_ about?

“Adachi. I don’t like him,” Satoru’s amiable best friend declares, so forcefully that Tsuji turns around in his chair to stare in their direction.

“Jeez, tell us how you really feel,” Satoru says dumbly. Kitamoto huffs an unconvincing laugh, and Satoru narrows his eyes at him. “Hey, what happened? Did he say something to you?”

“No, nothing like that. But he knows Natsume from another school.”

Oh, Satoru thinks. And his hands curl into fists in his lap, because he gets it. Every time someone Natsume used to know comes into the picture, Natsume winds up miserable.

Tsuji leans over, frowning. “Has he done something to Natsume?”

“No, but he’s been talking about him,” Kitamoto says darkly. “He likes to tell stories of when they were in middle school together, and odd things Natsume said or did back then. He’s  _really_  annoying. I think he’s trying to stir up trouble.”

“Well,” Satoru says, leaning back. “ _That’s_ not gonna happen.”

It’s almost a full week later that Natsume realizes there’s a new student in their school. It’s not really his fault, Satoru decides, since he was out sick for a few days. He’s still a little pale when he returns to class, and it’s hard to tell who makes a bigger fuss over him, Tsuji or Taki.

“Adachi?” he says in some surprise, pausing with a bite of fish left halfway suspended above his lunchbox. “I think I know him. I went to school with a boy by that name once.”

Tanuma pointedly takes a long drink, and Kitamoto starts stabbing viciously at his rice like it did something to offend him, so it’s left to Satoru to steer the conversation. He gestures lamely across the room and says, “Yeah he’s over there.”

Natsume follows his hand to where Adachi is sitting by himself, stirring his food around disinterestedly. It didn’t take long for him to talk himself into a corner, Satoru thinks. Just like he thought would happen, no one wants anything to do with the new guy who was trying to drag kind, self-conscious Natsume’s name through the dirt.

Natsume stands up, and smiles when Tanuma asks where he’s going.

“I’ll see if he wants to eat with us,” Natsume says, already making his way over. Adachi watches him approach with wide eyes. “He might not remember me, but it’s no fun eating alone.”


	6. any other day

The kids behind the kiosk are up to something. Satoru can smell it. **  
**

“Didn’t you used to live around here, Natsume?” Adachi pipes up, shading his eyes to look around their table at the pretty city scenery. They’re at an outdoor cafe, and Natsume’s cat looks pleased to be allowed to sit at the table while they wait on their food. Natsume, for his part, smiles vaguely.

“A few years ago,” he replies, “but I didn’t stay for very long.”

At this point, the ache in his eyes when he talks about those temporary homes is all but gone; the Fujiwaras love him so much it’s almost enough to eclipse the love he lived most of his life without, and Satoru is certain his friends help in that regard, too. There’s no loneliness as he follows Adachi’s eyes and looks out over the place that could have been his home, and Satoru is relieved.

Just for a moment, and then he’s back to being suspicious again, eyeing the unfamiliar faces at the counter warily.

So they probably recognize Natsume from when he lived here before. Generally, Satoru was quick to learn, that doesn’t bode well.

A girl in a smart seafoam green uniform comes out to their round table with a tray and a wide smile. Satoru doesn’t trust her as far as he can throw her, and he watches Kitamoto’s eyebrows lift up to meet his hairline – probably because there’s a cute girl within ten feet of Satoru and Satoru isn’t trying to flirt with her.

Well, joke’s on him, because there's an even  _cuter_  boy sitting on Satoru’s other side, currently struggling to keep his fat cat out of the fries, and if Satoru was going to flirt harmlessly with  _anyone_  it would be him.

“Enjoy your meal,” the girl says sweetly, and hurries off again to join her tittering friends.

Satoru swiftly trades his food for Natsume’s, and offers an impish grin at the dry look Natsume gives him. “Nishimura,” he says, “we ordered the same thing.”

“Uh-huh,” Satoru replies gamely, unwrapping the innocuous-looking burger, “but I want  _this_ one.”

As soon as the paper comes off, he’s hit by the heat. The sandwich in his hands  _smells_  spicy. What the heck did those kids do to it?

“Are your  _eyes_  watering?” Kitamoto says incredulously. Natsume blinks and reaches over, putting a hand on Satoru’s wrist to guide the burger closer for an inspection.

“Oh,” he says, sounding confused, “this is the chili burger. They make it with peppers and chili paste. It’s supposed to be pretty aggressive, actually – when I went to school here, kids would buy them as a prank for each other.”

“Have you ever tried it?” Satoru asks casually, shooting a murderous look up to the store counter. All the giggling up there has stopped, at least. Seriously, a  _prank burger_? What are they, twelve? It says a lot if  _Satoru_  thinks it’s immature. Or maybe it’d be funny if it was anybody else, but it wasn’t anybody else, it was  _Natsume_ , and Satoru is officially annoyed.

“I don’t really like spicy foods,” Natsume says, which isn’t really an answer. “They must have given us this by mistake,” he adds, “should we go tell them?”

“Nope,” Satoru says plainly, taking the burger back, “I’m gonna eat it.”

“Satchan,” Kitamoto says at length, long-suffering, “you hate spicy food, too.”

“Well, I’m gonna eat it anyway. Because I’m more of a man than you.”

More like he doesn’t want to give those strangers the satisfaction, but two bites in and his eyes are streaming and his mouth may as well be on  _fire_  and he can’t help but wheeze,  _“Oh my god I’m dying.”_

Taki and Adachi are both laughing as Tanuma reaches across the table to extract the burger from his hand, and Kitamoto pushes his drink over with a “Really, Nishimura? Really?” Natsume’s eyes are bright with humor, at the very least, as he scoots his drink over to Satoru, too – and really, Satoru would eat a dozen of those burgers to put that look on his face, even if it killed him. Which it actually might.

“Mind if I try it?” Tanuma asks, and Nishimura reaches out as if to save him.

“Don’t do it. You might have an asthma attack.”

“I don’t have asthma?”

Within a few minutes, everyone has tried a bite of the prank burger – even Nyanko-sensei, who doesn’t look impressed by it one way or another – and Natsume is muffling laughter behind his hands at the sorry state they’re all in, flushed with the heat in his mouth and the humor in his eyes, and Satoru thinks,  _Hah_.

He looks over his shoulder at the quiet girls at the counter and says, “Y’know what? Maybe we should order a few more of those.”

“Once you get past the burning, they’re not bad,” Taki giggles, fanning her mouth.

“I’ll buy,” Adachi says cheerfully, and Natsume goes with him.

Satoru wipes his still-tearing eyes with his sleeve, patting himself on the back, when Kitamoto leans forward on his elbows and says, “You’re a good guy, you know that?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Satoru replies without missing a beat, ignoring the way Taki and Tanuma stop talking to look at him, “all I did was steal Natsume’s food. You guys yell at me for that any other day.”

“Any other day,” Kitamoto agrees, always knowing way more than he lets on.


	7. poking in the right places

Nishimura comes barreling around the corner with panic in his eyes, and for a single, senseless moment Takashi goes cold with fear – something followed him to school, something dark and dangerous, something is  _after his friend_  – 

And then Tsuji comes around the corner after Nishimura, looking absolutely livid, and Takashi lets go of a breath he was holding. 

The relief is short-lived, because Nishimura spots him and says something that sounds like  _“ohthankgodit’syou”_  and then promptly ducks behind him.

“Wait no,” Takashi says helplessly, but by then it’s much too late, and their class rep is bearing down upon them a moment later. 

“Hand him over,” Tsuji demands, even sticking out an imperious hand; as though Nishimura is a rowdy kitten Takashi is harboring and not a full-sized second year high school student. “He deserves what’s coming to him.”

“It was an accident,” Nishimura says from behind Takashi’s shoulder, uncharacteristically meek. 

“’Accident’ doesn’t begin to cover it! I could  _kill_ you right now!”

They’re getting more than a few stares from passersby, and a few of the fellow kids from class two are snickering as they slink by the scene. No one is eager to get involved, and Takashi doesn’t blame them. Tsuji is generally a mild-mannered class president and one of the first people Takashi befriended in this town, but he has a temper that can put Nyanko-sensei’s to shame when he’s poked in the right places.

And Nishimura is good at poking in the right places.

Thoroughly involved whether he likes it or not, Takashi resigns himself to playing peacekeeper with good grace and a short sigh. 

“What did he do?” he asks dryly. He doesn’t believe for a moment that Tsuji’s wrath is misplaced, even as he stands in its way. Nishimura makes a wounded noise, and Tsuji shoves an agitated hand through his tousled curls. 

“I was helping Nomiya-sensei with his grading,” he says tersely. “He’s been helping with the volleyball club while Takeda-sensei is gone, so he asked me to go through some homework and workbooks for him – and I was  _almost done_ , but  _Nishimura_ screwed it all up!”

“I said I was sorry!” _  
_

“He came sauntering in, looking for something to do, and knocked everything off the desk. It took me an  _hour_ to get it all organized, and he just – “

This close, Takashi can’t help noticing that Tsuji doesn’t look okay. Anger aside, he’s nearly gray with exhaustion, and there are shadows under his eyes that Takashi recognizes, shadows he’s seen in the mirror after another in a row of sleepless nights. 

Tsuji is always the first one to class, and the last one to leave. He takes responsibility for his friends in more the manner of a fussy older sibling than an accountable class president, and he always seems to be busy. Since Sasada moved away, Takashi has to wonder how much help he gets anymore. 

“Nishimura,” Takashi says without looking back at him, “you really  _did_ apologize?”

“I  _did,_ I didn’t mean to mess anything up. I was gonna offer to help him pick up, but he was too busy flying off the handle to hear me!”

“Okay, okay. You go find Tanuma and Kitamoto and  _stay out of trouble._ Please. Just until school is over.” 

For all that he was happy to hide behind Takashi, he’s reluctant to leave him alone with their prickly class rep. It takes a pointed glare before Nishimura parts ways with a grumble, giving Tsuji a wary look as he goes. 

And Takashi isn’t good at this, at diffusing fights or fielding confrontation between friends, but he’s nothing if not willing to try. 

Because this frustration has roots that are much older and deeper than Nishimura knocking some papers off a desk. Nishimura is just the unfortunate catalyst, and Tsuji is going to feel terrible about it later. 

Takashi doesn’t want him to feel terrible about it later. 

“If it took you an hour before, it should only take the two of us half that time,” he says, a hand soft on Tsuji’s arm. Tsuji looks taken aback by the touch and his tone, looks like he doesn’t know what to do now that the object of his temper has gone – but Takashi is patient, and after a moment Tsuji nods. 

Tsuji  _likes_ to be helpful, and is more than likely the type of person to cheerfully give more than he gets. Takashi wonders if this is burnout, wonders if he’s stressed at home on top of everything he does at school, wonders at how little he actually knows about one of his first friends. 

His fingers dig into Tsuji’s sleeve. 

“It’s going to sound weird coming from me,” Takashi blurts, “but it’s okay to say what’s on your mind. If something’s bothering you, will you tell me? You’re important to me, and I want to help you if I can.”  

Tsuji stares at him, eyes wide behind his glasses. A few girls from their class giggle at the passionate soliloquy as they pass by, accustomed to a certain brand of shenanigans from their classmates at this point. They’re hiding big smiles behind their hands and Takashi feels himself flush red to the roots of his hair, because this must look like – 

“S- Sorry,” he stammers, letting him go. “I just – I meant – “

“I know what you meant,” Tsuji says, before Takashi can embarrass himself any more. He’s smiling helplessly, and that wounded frustration is discarded somewhere just out of reach for the time being. “ _Everything_ sounds weird coming from you, but I appreciate it.”

He tugs Takashi forward into a playful one-armed hug, and laughs when Takashi goes with a startled squawk. 

“Really,” Tsuji adds, just a little softer now that Takashi can’t quite look at him; a far cry from that furious force of nature from minutes ago, and more the friendly boy everyone in class two relies on so much. “I appreciate it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i dont often write from takashi's pov but °˖✧◝(⁰▿⁰)◜✧˖°


	8. is this some sort of weird club?

Katsumi can count on both hands the number of actual, physical fights he’s been in, and still have several fingers left over. He was a bully growing up, and maybe he still is one a little bit, but he would sooner use words to hurt than fists. He’s always held himself  _just_ above sinking to that low, that ‘stupid, belligerent guy’ low. Smart people aren’t into stupid guys, after all, and Katsumi  _likes_ dating smart people. 

But today, as the shadows stretch across the ground and the skyline burns dark orange in the dusk, the knuckles on his right hand are bruised. There’s blood in his mouth, dripping from a split lip. 

Today, he threw the first punch. And the second, and the third. Outnumbered, and angry enough not to care,  _seething_ with it to the point that no words were heavy enough to hurt the way he wanted those strangers to hurt. 

His fingers are folded tight around Natsume’s and he refuses to let go, even when Natsume’s friends catch up, and the odds go from three on two to three on six. Even when Tanuma and Kitamoto and fearless Taki move into the middle of the conflict and refuse to give ground, diffusing the tension with steely eyes and steadfast voices until those unfamiliar high schoolers turn around and leave. 

Nishimura is tipping Natsume’s face to one side, looking over the impressive bruise forming along his cheekbone. His eyes are wide and worried but the words that spill out of his mouth are, “It’s not that bad, Natsume. It’s barely even noticeable. We’ll get you some ice and you’ll be good as new.”

His gaze darts to Katsumi, down to the broken skin on his hand. Katsumi’s fist aches when he clenches it. “I’m fine,” he bites out. Tension is strumming hotly through his whole body. “Who the hell were those guys? Do you know them?”

He’s not sure who the question is for. Natsume tugs him silently toward a bench by their joined hands, and he sits down mechanically next to the shorter boy. 

“I know one of them,” Natsume replies. His voice is quiet, almost swallowed up by the chatter of insects and the wind brushing through the leaves. “He’s a – cousin, I think. I lived with him and his mother once. The other two must have been friends of his.” 

Kitamoto, Taki and Tanuma join them when they’re sure the strangers are gone. Kitamoto taps Nishimura on the arm and gestures over his shoulder, in the direction of the convenience store they passed earlier. Nishimura surrenders his seat to Taki, and she takes Natsume’s free hand in both of hers and scoots over until there isn’t an inch of empty space between them, and puts her head on his shoulder. 

“Let me see your hand,” Tanuma says, and it takes Katsumi a minute to work out that he means him _._ He offers it without thinking, too busy trying to wrap his mind around what Natsume considered an  _explanation_ to argue the point. 

“Wait, so – he’s  _related_ to you? He’s a member of your  _family_. And he – and you – and that’s, what, that’s  _normal_?” 

Natsume doesn’t answer but Taki says “ _Shibata_ ” in a low voice, warning Katsumi away from this off-limits door he’s trying to pry open. Tanuma sits back when he’s certain nothing is broken in Katsumi’s hand, and meets his incredulous gaze unflinchingly. 

His eyes are dark and cool and his voice is mild when he says, “You’re smarter than this. You can put one and two together.”

Natsume’s breath hitches, and Tanuma touches his knee in something like apology. Taki’s expression burns with empathy and love and a wounded sense of fairness, and a pit forms in the bottom of Katsumi’s stomach when he finally  _gets it._

Little Natsume, who came to school in the morning with the same ugly marks he left the playground with. Who never lifted his head when his caretaker came to get him, quiet and unobtrusive and always a conscious arm’s length away. Who moved to Katsumi’s neighborhood in the middle of the school year, and moved away again before the term had finished.

He swallows hard. The rage from earlier has cooled rapidly into something else, something that makes him want to be sick. 

Katsumi is no better than Natsume’s cousin, at the end of the day. He’s no better than  _anybody._ BecauseKatsumi, brazen idiot that he is, has been holding himself above a low he’s reached already. A low he sank beneath as a child, that very first time his voice reached across the schoolyard to Natsume with the sole intent to hurt him. 

He tips his head forward into his bruised hand, hiding burning eyes behind a sweaty palm and biting his broken lip so he won’t do something awful, like cry. The hand still holding Natsume’s tightens, curling so hard around his slender fingers that it probably hurts.

“I’m an idiot,” he manages, voice wobbling dangerously. “I’m such an idiot, Natsume, I’m sorry.”

He has no idea why he’s allowed to be here. No idea why Natsume let Katsumi anywhere near him, that day Katsumi hunted him down to this small town. 

“You’re an idiot, all right,” Natsume says without missing a beat. His voice is hoarse, but it isn’t harsh. He nudges Katsumi’s shoulder amiably, as easily as if he’s never been hurt by him. “Taking on three guys, all way bigger than you, is the stupidest thing I’ve seen you do yet.”

“Yet,” Taki agrees with a smile Katsumi can hear. 

“Looks like I attract your type. I have no idea what that says about me.”

“You don’t want to know,” Tanuma assures him kindly, and Natsume huffs out a quiet laugh. “Shibata fits in with the rest of us just fine, doesn’t he?”

“I’d say he does,” Kitamoto says at that point, and when Katsumi lifts his head, it’s to find the missing two of their party grinning at him from where they’re sitting in the grass beside the bench. “Shibata’s the first one of us who’s actually picked a  _fight_ , but – “

“Only cause you wouldn’t  _let_ me that one time!” Nishimura says hotly, rooting through one of the plastic bags they brought back from the convenience store. “I could totally have taken that guy. And I totally will if I ever see him again. Waltzing into  _our_ town, talking trash about  _our_ friend…”

There’s a shifting of bodies, and Shibata is tugged off the bench onto the ground with the rest of them, and finally lets go of Natsume’s hand to catch the cold compress Kitamoto tosses at him. It’s followed by a can of tea and then a package of ice cream, both brands he doesn’t recognize. 

He blinks down at them, and then up at his friends. Taki rolls her eyes and reaches over Natsume to direct the compress up to his sore mouth. “You’re smarter than that,” she says, taking the sting out of Tanuma’s earlier words. She follows it up with a sincere smile, and only moves her hand away when Katsumi lifts his own to hold the compress in place. 

Nishimura is passing Natsume a candy bar, and Katsumi catches the middle of something like “–was  _awesome_ by the way. I mean, not awesome that it happened, and your cousin is a huge jerk, but Shibata really knows how to throw a punch and  _that_  was cool – “

“You’re one of us,” Kitamoto says, toasting Katsumi with his own canned drink. 

“Is this some sort of weird club I’m not aware of?” Natsume says dryly. 

“Yes,” everyone else says in perfect unison, followed by Tanuma’s helpful, “Just drink your tea.”

Katsumi’s first thought is,  _I don’t deserve this._

His next one is,  _But I could._

He can count on both hands the number of fights he’s been in, and still have a few fingers left over. He’s always held himself to a certain standard, has always held himself above a certain low, but after tonight he doesn’t really care  _what_ people think of him.

Maybe he doesn’t have to earn Natsume’s forgiveness, because he has it already, but he  _wants_ to. 

He wants to be good enough, he wants to be  _better._ He wants to deserve it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> its getting hard to keep track of what i have/havent crossposted yet adgldhgjdag


	9. see you again

A bewildered Toyomatsu takes the pencil from Yuriko’s imperiously outstretched hand, and leans over the table to scribble directions on an empty page in her notebook. His round-framed glasses slip an inch down his nose as he does, bangs falling forward and flicking neat parentheses into his eyes. Junko giggles good-naturedly at the sight.

“That’s the route the cycling club took,” Toyomatsu says, adjusting his glasses. Yuriko turns the notebook towards herself, scanning the page eagerly. “It’s a rural town, and really small. Easy to miss, but it looked nice.”  

“Like a well-kept secret,” Junko says, leaning forward on her elbows. Her smile is crooked and cute and makes Yuriko smile in turn, every time, without fail. “You’ll tell Natsume I said hi, won’t you?”

“Of course I will,” Yuriko says fondly, and folds the notebook closed with unending care. “We have the day off tomorrow, so I’ll go then. Thank you, Toyomatsu, this means a lot to me.”

Natsume lingers, like the perfume of a person who left the room minutes before Yuriko arrived. He occupies her mind in small ways—she thinks of him when she climbs the steps to her favorite shrine, when she opens an umbrella against heavy rainfall, when an impatient parent raises their voice at a somber child in a convenience store—and he’s dear to her, for all that she didn’t know him for very long, and didn’t know him very well.

Now it feels as though someone’s pried open her ribcage and stuffed it full of sunlight. She’s going to see him again.

* * *

“I really didn’t need an escort, Toyomatsu,” Yuriko says dryly, standing when the bus bounces to a stop outside a weathered depot, and picking up her own bag before he has the chance to be an awkward gentleman. “If I  _did,_ I would have brought Junko along.”

“You don’t know your way around this town,” he argues staunchly, for the fifth time in as many minutes. “I mean, I don’t either, but—what if something happened to you because I gave you these directions and you went off on your own? You know?”

And really, he cancelled plans with friends to come with her, so she relents with a smile and gives his sleeve a tug, leading the way down the narrow aisle.

“Looks like it’s a bit of a walk,” Yuriko says, shading her eyes. “But the air is so  _nice_ here!”

“No city smog,” Toyomatsu points out as he joins her. “Comparatively, mountain air smells downright sweet.”

The bus pulls away with the throaty grumble of an ancient engine, and Yuriko adjusts her bag, does her best to quell the excited surge of sunlight in her heart, and starts walking.

* * *

From the looks of things, students have the day off in this town, as well. Yuriko approaches a group of girls about her age and asks if they know anyone by the name of Natsume. She isn’t sure what she’s expecting, but she still feels a thrill of surprise when the girls’ faces light up, and they clamor around her with a much friendlier air.

“We go to the same school, but he’s in a different class, so I don’t have his number or anything,” says one of the girls with a rueful smile. She brightens after a moment and adds, “Oh, but he’s really good friends with Taki Tooru—I could tell you where her house is, if you’d like.”

He’s well-liked here, Yuriko realizes. He’s  _popular_ here.

Beaming, she thanks the girls gratefully for their help, and all but drags Toyomatsu down the street.

* * *

“This is beginning to feel like a wild goose chase,” Toyomatsu says dryly, half an hour later. Yuriko shushes him, still every bit as determined as when she started.

“The woman at the Taki residence told us she went down to the river with her friends,” she says stoutly. “That’s straight down this road, right? So we’re nearly there.”

There are fields of lotuses blooming in what feels like every direction. The scent of purple is rich and thick in the breeze. The afternoon sun hangs high in the sky, and Yuriko has to shade her eyes against the brightness of it.

Cheerful voices catch her attention almost immediately, and she quickens her pace with her heart in her throat, stepping off the dirt road and into the springy summer grass at the top of a sloping incline at the riverside.

There are a handful of teenagers running amok down below, pant legs rolled up to their knees, T-shirts sopping wet and hanging baglike off their shoulders. The girl among them has her skirt knotted to one side and her hair pulled up in a messy bun and a fat cat in her arms. She laughs brightly when two of the boys knock each other sideways into the deeper waters.

“You’ve probably scared all the fish away for  _miles,_ ” she scolds them, in a tone too amused to be truly scolding. “What’s poor Touko-san going to say when we go back empty handed?”

“Oh, don’t worry about that. Touko-san knew  _exactly_  what to expect when Nishimura and Kitamoto promised to catch our lunch.”

The humorous voice draws Yuriko’s eyes to the pale boy lounging quietly in the shade with a taller, black-haired companion. His dusty blond hair is damp, but even then, it doesn’t quite hang into his eyes anymore. He’s looking away from her, but Yuriko would know him anywhere.

“Natsume!” she calls out, her smile blinding.

He turns, and lifts honeyed amber eyes to meet her, and it feels as though the day they said goodbye was simply yesterday.

* * *

She’s met with thinly veiled hostility at first, but only right at first. When Natsume softens and smiles sweetly and introduces her as, “A good friend of mine, from a place I used to live,” his friends thaw like spring, and meet her and Toyomatsu both warmly.

“ _Another_ long-lost friend?” a boy introduced as Shibata says, pressing a hand to his chest in mock-hurt. The ruined shirt he’s wearing looks expensive. “Natsume, I thought what we had was  _special._  How many more of us do you have tucked away somewhere?”

“Not many,” Natsume says dryly, nudging his shoulder. “Don’t you worry.”

“It’s so nice to meet you,” Taki says, tucking her arm into Yuriko’s and beaming at her, every bit as though she wasn’t ready to fight her a moment ago. Her sleeve soaks Yuriko’s within seconds. “You can tell us all about when Natsume was a cute middle school student.”

“Okay, but first, let’s relocate,” Nishimura decides for everyone, sloshing out of the river and hunting for his shoes. “Natsume, we’re gonna all need to borrow some clothes, okay?”

“Wait, what?”

“Oh, come on, you have plenty. The Fujiwaras take you shopping every other weekend.”

Kitamoto ropes Adachi into helping untangle the fishing lines, and Taki stares Shibata down with a chilling smile the second he opens his mouth around a flirt in Yuriko’s direction. Nishimura and Tanuma are both chatting with Toyomatsu, including him warmly and without much effort, as though they’re practiced at being kind.

Yuriko likes this wild group Natsume’s fallen in with. She’s happy he came to this place.

He catches her eye on the walk home. There are four people sandwiched between them, and everyone is talking and laughing at the top of their lungs, but Natsume’s smile is soft and all for her, and Yuriko meets it right away with one of her own.

* * *

The already big party is two bigger when they arrive at a large family house, and Yuriko smiles bashfully as she steps inside with everyone else. She knows what  _her_ mother would say, exasperated at the sight of two more mouths to feed, and braces herself when a woman in a worn smock comes into the entrance hall.

Her expression shifts into one of surprise at the sight that greets her in the genkan. Natsume steps forward to meet her. Yuriko can’t see his face.

She knows this must be the kind woman Toyomatsu told her about, but all Yuriko can think of is the person Natsume lived with back when she knew him—the person who came to their school midday smelling like alcohol, who Natsume couldn’t even ask for money for a haircut, who got rid of him the second he was too much trouble.

Her heart is in her throat. Natsume says, “Sorry, Touko-san. We picked up two more.”

The woman presses a hand to her mouth and laughs warmly. Natsume’s friends are beaming at her. Yuriko lets go of a breath she was holding, and watches Touko reach out to cup one side of Natsume’s face in the gentle cradle of her fingers.

“My, my,” she says, impossibly fond, “you’re so popular, Takashi-kun. Introduce me to whoever I haven’t met, please! And you’re all more than welcome to stay for lunch.”

She smiles kindly, as though her face was made for it. Natsume, when Yuriko gets a good look at him, smiles almost exactly the same way.

Natsume’s foster father laughs when they all pile into the sitting room, folding his newspaper and greeting Natsume’s friends by name as they regale him with their afternoon adventures. They’re all comfortable here, in this big house, with Natsume’s small family. The fat cat Taki was holding is snoring comfortably in Nishimura’s lap, and Tanuma gets up when Natsume does to help Touko with a tray of iced tea.

* * *

She doesn’t get a chance to talk to Natsume alone until almost everyone else has gone, and even then she can’t stay much longer herself or she’ll miss her bus.

“I’ll walk you,” Natsume says, and stands up, calling for his cat. Touko tells him to take an umbrella. Tanuma and Taki smile peacefully at Yuriko from where they’re sitting together on the porch.

“I’m happy you came to see him,” Taki says. “It was so nice of you.”

“We don’t expect nice from the people he used to know,” Tanuma adds plainly. “It’s good to know he had friends before. Thank you for taking care of him.”

Before, Yuriko thinks. As though they’ve split his life into two halves, and the half they’re in now—the After—is the better one. She hopes she might find a place in this half of his life, too. She wants to be a part of the better one.

Natsume lingers. He occupies the mind in small, unobtrusive ways. There is a tiny corner of Yuriko’s heart that belongs to him, in much the same way a much larger corner belongs to Junko, but he has never been hers. He has never belonged to any of the places those distant, unkind relatives tried to pin him down, like an unwilling butterfly wing to corkboard.

But he found home here, in this lazily sprawling country town. He smiles at his neighbors, and waves when shopkeepers greet him by name. He’s so comfortable, so far removed from that detached boy Yuriko remembers, who could hardly raise his head to say hello to a classmate.

This is familiar, still. Walking with him under an umbrella. Even if it’s a tighter squeeze than it once was, with Toyomatsu hunkered in on Natsume’s other side, it’s still nice. She’s smiling as she walks, heart full to bursting.

The bus is already coming into view down the road when they reach the small bus stop. Yuriko’s bag is heavy with leftovers Touko sent with her. Toyomatsu is flipping through a book Adachi lent him. Yuriko reaches out to catch Natsume’s sleeve, smiling widely at him.

She says, “I’ll come see you again.”

“You’re welcome anytime,” he replies. His eyes are soft for her the way they were for Nishimura and Taki and Touko. She’ll hold that in her heart forever. “Call to let me know when you’re coming, and I’ll make sure it’s not as crazy around here.”

“The crazy was definitely a part of the charm,” Yuriko says, warm with the knowledge of his phone number secured next to his address in her favorite notebook. “But I want to go fishing  _with_ you guys next time. Deal?”

“Deal.” He laughs, and even Toyomatsu looks up at the sound of it, looking as stunned as Yuriko feels.

* * *

Natsume stands at the depot, waving as the bus pulls away. Yuriko shoves her bag onto Toyomatsu’s lap and shoves her window down, hoping to catch a parting glance of her friend.

Someone is standing with him, nearly two heads taller and oddly thin. They’re waving, too.

Yuriko hadn’t noticed any other people waiting at the tiny bus stop. She’s pretty sure no one else had been on the lonely street with them, and in the flat country it’s easy to see for miles.

Natsume and the tall, tapered figure are still waving as the bus picks up speed and pulls farther away. Natsume’s umbrella is closed, but his dusty blond hair is dry as the wind combs through it. She wonders if the awning of the depot extends farther than she thought. It’s hard to make out through the rain.

Either way, she waves back, until long after she can’t see them anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i actually love yuriko a lot, i name-drop her here and there but i think this is the only oneshot of mine that actually features her properly u_u


	10. something much, much better

Natsume is still relatively new when it happens, new enough that a few people from other classes refer to him largely as “the transfer student.” 

He’s settling in well, and Jun is sure no one has teased or taunted him since he’s been here – Jun  _made_ sure of that, with Tsuji’s enthusiastic help – but there’s still something about him. Something that makes it seem as though he’s never  _all_ here, that he’s always holding back. Those pale smiles and glass-like eyes get under Jun’s skin a little bit.

The purple and pale yellow of healing bruises she catches a glimpse of under the sleeves or collar of his shirt get under her skin a  _lot._ So does the way Natsume is so often by himself, eating lunch and walking home alone.

But he’s friendly, if very quiet, and Nishimura and Kitamoto have all but adopted him, so maybe it’s something Jun has looked too much into. 

Until the lunch bell rings on a day as unremarkable as any other, and Nishimura rushes up to Natsume’s desk and starts to throw an arm him, and Natsume  _flinches_ away. 

Jun’s breath catches. 

He immediately looks sorry he did it, mortified as he opens his mouth around an apology, but Nishimura beats him to the punch.

“Hey, I’m sorry,” he says sheepishly. If he’s hurt by Natsume’s reaction he hides it well, and smiles easily as he goes on, “I just wanted to see if you were ready for lunch! Kitamoto’s waiting for us on the roof.”

Laughing and cajoling as he herds Natsume out of the room, but he makes sure to keep his hands to himself after that.

In a town as small as theirs, everyone grows up knowing everybody – and suffice to say, the majority of their classmates are used to Nishimura and his tactile displays of affection.

Tsuji, for example – somehow having been in the same class as Nishimura since  _elementary school_ –  has had most of his life to desensitize himself to the harmless, overly familiar way Nishimura will drape himself across his friends for attention or a favor or whatever flight of fancy he’s following that day. 

Jun doesn’t spend very much time with him outside of school, but she knows that everyone Nishimura is close to gets more or less the same treatment.

All but Natsume, that is.

Even now, more than a week later, he’s careful not to surprise Natsume with the sudden hugs he likes to spring on Kitamoto  – and though he’s always grabbing Natsume’s arm or messing with his hair or feeling his forehead on days Natsume looks particularly pale, Nishimura telegraphs every move before he makes it, watching Natsume closely to make sure the touch is a welcome one.

It’s a feat for someone like Nishimura. Jun is honestly impressed.

Natsume, on the other hand, is  _miserable._

During lunch, when their classroom is half-empty and a few students from other classes are milling about, Nishimura bursts back into the room with a handful of snacks. He waves cheerfully to Natsume without pausing on his way past him, instead dumping his haul on a desk at random and then throwing himself happily against Kitamoto’s back to see what the latter is scowling at on his phone.

Natsume looks so forlorn that Jun finally has to say something.

“He’s not excluding you,” she points out. Natsume starts, the way he always does when he isn’t prepared to be addressed, and looks around at her with wide eyes. “Nishimura, I mean. He’s just careful with you, that’s all.”

“I know,” Natsume says quickly, and then looks down at his hands. Quietly, he adds, “I think it’s because I hurt his feelings.”

The words sound strange coming out of his mouth. Jun can’t imagine Natsume hurting anything, even accidentally, and  _certainly_ not on purpose. He’s like a gentle ghost, unobtrusively haunting a desk near the back of their class, doing his best to exist beside everyone else without leaving an impression they wouldn’t like. 

Feelings are something else, though, Jun thinks fairly. Even a kind word can hurt, sometimes. For someone as effervescent as Nishimura, it might have been especially painful to watch Natsume wince out of his reach as though he expected a blow. 

But he isn’t holding himself away out of hurt feelings. It isn’t anger or slight. How could Natsume even  _think_ so?

“Well,” Jun says reasonably, “have you talked to him about it?”

Natsume’s eyes get somehow rounder. Jun spares herself just a moment of incredulity. Oh,  _honestly._

“You’re not very good at this, are you?” she remarks without cruelty, propping her chin up in her hand. “If you think you’ve done wrong, you apologize. If there’s a problem, you talk it out. You have to  _communicate_ to keep your friends, Natsume.” 

She says it largely out of good humor. They’ve been classmates for almost two months now and this is the longest conversation she’s had with him, after all.

She doesn’t mean for him to look so vulnerable at the playful quip. For a split second, it’s as if his soul is bared to her, and she can see every inch of how much he  _doesn’t say,_ how much he  _can’t tell,_ how much he  _wants to._ And then the moment passes, and he gives her one of those smiles like fog.

“You’re right,” he says, looking down at his desk again. “I’m not very good at this.” And then, before Jun has a chance to say anything or  _do_ anything with the aching sympathy come to life in her heart, Natsume looks back up at her bravely and says, “What should I do?”

Jun blinks at him for a moment, and then feels herself smile. “Ask for help,” she says warmly, pushing to her feet. “Which you just did. And since I like you, I’ll give you this one free of charge.” 

Really, she thinks, it’s such a simple fix. It only takes a few words to Nishimura, out of earshot of everyone else, and self-recrimination chases understanding across the transparent boy’s stunned expression.

Then he mutters something under his breath and runs a terse hand through his hair, and all but stomps back to where Jun left Natsume at his desk. He puts out an imperious hand, and Natsume doesn’t flinch this time. He doesn’t hesitate, either, reaching out to take it with those wide, lamplike eyes.

And then he’s hauled off his chair for his troubles, stumbling to his feet as Nishimura yanks him into an embrace with weeks worth of shelved enthusiasm behind it. 

She can’t hear what they’re saying, as far away as she is, but she can see Natsume’s startled expression from over Nishimura’s shoulder. The way the surprise softens into fondness, and the edge of a shy smile that he tucks out of sight against Nishimura’s shirt. 

Everyone else has had a lifetime to get used to Nishimura and the affectionate way he reaches out to everyone he likes. Natsume seems to have had a lifetime of something entirely different, doesn’t seem to recognize the gestures for what they are, once flinched away from an unexpected touch with shadows in his eyes. 

But he’s still new here, Jun thinks. Given enough time, he’ll get used to it, too.

And whatever put those shadows in his eyes will be long forgotten in favor of something much, much better. 


	11. comeback

For most of the students, small-towners as they all are, it’s their first time in Fukuoka, so the itinerary the teachers and chaperones have planned is more of a guideline to fall back on than anything else. With three days ahead of them for this trip, there’s plenty of time for them to see a good chunk of what the capital city has to offer without keeping to too strict a timetable. 

“Nomiya-sensei, did you want me to put everyone in groups?” The class representative, Tsuji Masayuki, materializes at Futoshi’s elbow. He’s watching his classmates with a harried sort of mother hen look, and adds, “Before they go too far?”

Futoshi bites back most of a grin and says, “Sure, Tsuji. I appreciate it.” And then, for what feels like the fifth time, “This is a vacation for you too, you know.”

“I know,” Tsuji says quickly, smiling even as he moves away. “Natsume is helping me, so it won’t take long. We’ll make a list of the groups and be right back!”

Sure enough, Natsume Takashi is waiting for him with a handful of other students, and smiles when Tsuji presents his self-given task. His kids are a good bunch, Futoshi decides, and he’s content to hang back and watch over them for awhile.

The other classes move ahead while Tsuji’s classmates roll their eyes good-naturedly and allow themselves to be lumped into groups of threes and fours. Tanuma, Kitamoto and Taki, two boys from class one and a girl from class five who nonetheless are familiar faces in Futoshi’s classroom, grin from where they wait to one side as Nishimura Satoru is paired, perhaps predictably, with Natsume and Tsuji himself.

“Well, you’re no fun,” Nishimura says blandly, “but I  _guess_ you can be in me and Natsume’s group, Masa-chan.”

“Would you rather be stuck with Adachi?” Tsuji says with an icy smile, pencil hovering above his roster. Nishimura shuts up promptly, his friends howl with laughter, and Futoshi makes a mental note to remember that threat himself. 

“Nomiya-kun!” a voice calls out suddenly, and Futoshi turns in some surprise to be greeted by a familiar face. “It’s Akihiko,” his old friend says unnecessarily, a pleased smile on his face. “We went to college together.”

“I remember you,” Futoshi says, moving forward to clasp his hand. His already pleasant morning gets that much better, and he grins. “Still teaching?”

“Am I ever,” Akihiko says with the faint air of exhaustion that speaks of the long nights and early mornings Futoshi himself is familiar with. “And I can see you’ve got your hands full. Class trip?”

“Yeah, it’s all they’ve been able to talk about for weeks. It’s not so bad though,” he adds, “my class this year is my best one yet.”

“You probably say that every year,” Akihiko says dryly, and there’s no prudent way to deny that, so Futoshi ignores him. Laughingly, Akihiko says, “Well, most kids are alright. You get one or two stand-out cases, but mostly they’re all more or less the same. If you can teach one class, you can teach them all.”

Futoshi blinks, surprised to be faced with a philosophy he doesn’t agree with in the least. “Is that so,” he finally says.

“Granted, everyone I’ve talked to has had that one  _nightmare_ child,” Akihiko goes on. “At least, that’s what I was always told. And I never really bought it until a few years ago, when a boy transferred into my class in the middle of term. Strangest kid I’ve ever met, and nothing but trouble!”

Tsuji is coming back with his roster, and Futoshi is grateful to turn his attention to someone else. He’s already wearing a smile for his student, putting a hand out for the clipboard. 

But Tsuji doesn’t seem to notice, bright eyes darting from his face to Akihiko’s as sharply as if he’d just been shocked. With a pang, Futoshi realizes Akihiko is still talking, and in the middle of saying something along the lines of “– and honestly it was no wonder why. That Natsume alienated himself with his weird behavior and no one wanted to be around him.” 

Tsuji stands there with the clipboard hanging in one half-outstretched hand, frozen to the spot by something riding the line between horror and hostility. And Tsuji has never once given into his temper despite all the responsibility he shoulders and the raucous classmates he has to keep in line, but he looks up at Akihiko and opens his mouth around something Futoshi  _knows_ will get him in trouble. 

“Thank you for your hard work,” he says, before his student can get a word in edgewise. He takes a step closer, and takes the roster out of his hand. 

Tsuji reluctantly drags heated eyes off Akihiko in favor of giving his teacher a long, measuring look. Futoshi holds Tsuji’s eye firmly.

“I’ll take care of everything else, okay?” he says. “You go catch up with your friends and have a good time.”

Futoshi may not be perfect, but he’s always done right by his kids, and the pay-off is right here, in the way Tsuji relaxes inch by inch, trusting in his teacher to make this right. Somewhere behind him, Nishimura is yelling for Tsuji to ‘come  _on,_ everyone else has left us behind already, hurry  _up!’_

“Then just leave without me!” Tsuji retorts as he hurries back to join them, and Futoshi smiles at the indignation on Nishimura’s face.

“But then I’d have to leave without  _Natsume_!”

Tsuji doesn’t look back once, but he hooks a proprietary hand around Natsume’s arm and all but drags him out of the room – away from Akihiko’s disdainful soliloquy and back to the relative safety of the rest of their class. 

Only then does Futoshi turn to face Akihiko, and his smile fades at the stunned look on the other man’s face. “After that, it goes without saying,” Futoshi says slowly, “that Natsume is in my class this year.”

“I guess it does.” Akihiko seems bewildered. “I thought you said – “

“That my class this year is my best yet? I did say that. You’re right, I probably say it every year, but I mean it every year, too.” 

There’s a knot in the pit of his chest, because Futoshi remembers the solemn ghost Natsume Takashi was at the beginning of the year, the way he would find the transfer student eating lunch by himself, or napping alone in unused classrooms. 

And only moments ago he was smiling brightly as he helped overworked Tsuji, with probably the most extroverted child Futoshi has ever taught hanging off him the way Nishimura is  _always_ hanging off him anymore, while a handful of their friends from other classes waited nearby.

It’s a turnaround Futoshi doesn’t get to see often – a comeback from whatever else Natsume has lived through that makes Futoshi  _proud_ of him as a student and as a  _person_ , too – and he hates that there are teachers, educators, that could see what he sees and not appreciate it for the wonder it is.

“He was a child who I can only assume was treated unkindly by many people,” Futoshi says, “and  _despite_ those people, he has grown into a compassionate and caring individual, well-liked by his peers and surrounded by friends. As his teacher, I’ll thank you to leave him alone from now on.”

Futoshi bows shortly, only to be met by silence. It’s a silence that doesn’t bother him, and one he doesn’t think too deeply on. Moving away from the man he once knew to catch up to the students he came here with, his thoughts are already shifting to the restaurants nearby, and where he might be able to afford to treat them all to lunch. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tsuji doesnt have a canon given name and until he does ive named him masayuki :') 
> 
> (nomiya-sensei also doesnt have a given name as far as i know so i named him too lol)


	12. i still mean it, you know

The first thing that comes out of Natsume’s bookbag is school work, and Madara scoffs. Humans concern themselves with so much  _nonsense_. 

But then Natsume withdraws a small cake box, and that is much more interesting. The boy smiles when Madara leans in to sniff greedily. 

“It’s yours, sensei. As long as you promise to let me study in peace.”

Madara snatches the box up, without making any such agreement, and opens it to find a slice of the cheesecake he’s been eyeing for days, from the only cafe in town that won’t let Madara inside. 

Natsume is kind almost to a fault, and usually that only means Madara has his hands full getting the brat out of all the trouble his soft heart finds him in. 

Sometimes, though, that kindness means cake. 

“You are the single best thing that’s ever happened to me,” Madara says, and he isn’t sure if he means Natsume or the dessert. 

Natsume chuckles. “Let’s see if you still mean that when the Book of Friends is empty.” 

Madara would dignify that with a response if the cake in his paws didn’t require so much attention. 

When the day finally comes that the Book sits nameless, many years later, Natsume has grown into a man his grandmother would be proud of. Stronger and cleverer than he was as a child, but still with a softness that survived every painful encounter to this point, a kindness that brought him farther than self-serving cruelty ever would have.  

And he looks down at Madara’s lucky cat form and says, “That’s the end of our deal, isn’t it, sensei?”

But it’s not as though Madara hasn’t had plenty of time to think about it. He sighs, put-upon, and looks at his human charge with one narrow eye. 

“As long as your name is Natsume, trouble will follow you no matter where you go. Might as well stick around and keep an eye on things, so long as I get free food out of it.” 

Natsume blinks, stunned by such a casual rejoinder, and then – slowly – he smiles. Madara is treated to cake again that night, and although he didn’t say what he did for a sugary reward, it’s not as though he’s going to turn it down. 

Yokai do still come calling, but the days are much quieter than they used to be, and Natsume graduates high school, and goes to college, and builds a family. His life is full where it once was empty, and try as he might, Madara can’t convince himself that the sunburst of emotion in his soul is anything but pride. 

His stubborn charge has a husband and a child, now – both adopted into his clan – and on lazy Sunday afternoons, Natsume and Madara join them at the park. 

Natsume sits on a bench and Madara settles on his lap, going unnoticed while the remaining two of their family play in the sandbox. Natsume’s expression is fond as he watches them, and there’s no trace of the shadows that lurked in his eyes when he was a boy. 

And somehow, Madara’s mind drifts back to that spring afternoon at the Fujiwara’s house, and the words he once said on a lark. Too old at this point to dither, Madara says plainly, “I still mean it, you know.” 

Natsume looks down at him. “You still mean what?”

But now Susumu is running towards them with open arms, dark hair flying behind him, and his high-pitched and delighted “Papa! Nyanko-sensei!”demands Madara’s full attention.

He can’t expect a human to remember one fleeting comment, from more than ten years ago. Their days are so full of conversation and encounters that some memories are bound to slip through the cracks, to make room for more important things. 

But Madara wakes the next morning to find a cake box beside him, and inside it a piece of a cheesecake he hasn’t tasted in years. Natsume must have had to go a long way to find it, and somehow it tastes as good as Madara remembers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> originally there was a line near the end of this story that alluded to a certain pairing, but since my intention is to keep this series gen i edited it out :')
> 
>  
> 
> ~~anyone who recognizes susumu will know what pairing it was anyway~~


	13. a lot of good things are like that

Natsume’s head is bowed, face hidden in his hands, and although he’s utterly silent Kaname  _knows_ he’s crying. 

Kaname has never been around to see this part. Natsume has friends among the ayakashi, and Ponta, for all his bark and bluster, is a good and loyal companion to Natsume when it matters most – 

but somehow, Kaname has never thought about this. That for all the meetings, there are just as many partings. That even for someone like Natsume, who has already said goodbye to so much, the goodbyes never get easier with time. 

Aching for him, Kaname says, “Natsume? Do you want me to leave?”

Natsume’s breath hitches, and he shakes his head furiously. Kaname takes it as permission to sit down beside him. He doesn’t have time to come up with anything comforting before Natsume is leaning into his side, hiding his tear-stained face against Kaname’s shoulder, and then all Kaname has to do is put an around him. 

“Was she happy?” he asks, of the spirit he only barely got a glimpse of before she parted the world. Natsume nods a moment later. Carefully, Kaname adds, “Would you mind – telling me about her?”

He hopes this is the right thing to ask. Natsume is so often the only one left to mourn these invisible figures, and there’s nothing Kaname can do with his burden but help him carry it.

There’s a long moment where Kaname isn’t sure what Natsume’s answer will be. Then, without lifting his head or moving out of Kaname’s arm, he says, “Her name was Airi. She was a white jasmine tree.” 

He talks about her for the better part of an hour, sitting with Kaname under a starry canopy. More than he’s ever had to say about himself, he talks about a little mountain spirit that no one else will miss, and how much she loved the peaches Taki brought her, and what hopes she held for the future. 

She was kind, and she was a bright place in Natsume’s life for the short time he knew her, and despite that her memory will be a painful one. A lot of good things are like that, ending in sorrow because they end at all. 

Kaname wonders if there’s such a thing as a painless encounter. He hopes, for Natsume’s sake, that it’s possible to find goodness in someone and keep it, no matter what comes after. 


	14. just you watch me

The thing is, Natsume’s not as good at keeping secrets as he seems to think he is. 

Atsushi might not know the  _matter_ of them, but he knows they’re there. 

Natsume very carefully doesn’t react to the name of the place they’re going, when Nishimura first brings up the idea. He doesn’t flinch or freeze or frown, but the pause he takes is loud and clear – Atsushi probably would have seen it from the other side of the room. He’s pretty sure the others see it, too. 

And because they’re all reasonably intelligent people, they don’t wonder why a neighboring town might have bad connotations for him. Natsume has never told them any specifics about the conditions he grew up in, the people he grew up around, but they can guess. 

“I really,  _really_ want this to happen,” Nishimura says abruptly, with that bright-eyed look of absolute conviction that usually precedes his getting his way. “We haven’t taken a trip together in ages! We  _have_ to go!”

Atsushi has known Nishimura long enough to recognize an ulterior motive when he sees it. Natsume has only known Nishimura for two years, give or take, and still softens at the enthusiasm on the other boy’s face. 

“I’ll definitely go,” Natsume says, putting his own feelings on the back burner. “It sounds like fun,” he adds convincingly.

If it had been anyone else manipulating Natsume like that, Atsushi would have taken them aside for a few strong words and maybe a threat for good measure, if the situation called for one. But it’s Nishimura, of all people, who can  _and will_ get into physical altercations if he feels his friends aren’t being treated respectfully – who is especially protective of Natsume, always reacting immediately to Natsume’s moods and behavior like a wise dog – and Atsushi knows better than to think Nishimura has anything but Natsume’s best interest in mind. 

When they arrive, stepping out of the station and onto a bright city street, Nishimura proves it by throwing an arm around Natsume’s shoulders and proclaiming, “This is gonna be  _great!_ I’ve never been here before!” 

“Really? I have,” Natsume says. “I used to live here, actually. Before the Fujiwaras took me in.” 

Tanuma goes stiff, and whatever fleeting thought moves through his eyes is at once too fast for Atsushi to follow, and too shaken for him to want to bring it up. Taki puts a discreet hand on Tanuma’s arm. Nishimura bulldozes ahead with hard-headed determination to make the impossible happen. 

“No way! Then you know all the cool places to go,” Nishimura drops his arm in favor of snatching up Natsume’s hand, a sunny smile on his face. “Show us your favorite place to eat!” 

Natsume sets his cat down, rather than let go of Nishimura’s hand to wrap his second arm around it again, and the disgruntled creature goes to Tanuma instead. Atsushi doesn’t miss the slight way Tanuma relaxes when the cat begins purring in his ear, but he’s also a decent enough person not to mention it.

“Oh, um,” Natsume is saying eloquently, “I didn’t go out much here, but – there’s a restaurant my foster parents really liked?”

“Ugh, bluh,” Nishimura says with disdain, “those people have bad taste. Any other ideas?”

Natsume looks wondering at the easy dismissal of the family he wasn’t good enough for. “There’s a place some of my classmates would go to after school. It has burgers and shakes and stuff.” 

“Ooh, that sounds good!” Taki says brightly. “And I’m  _starving.”_

So off they go – Nishimura doesn’t let go of Natsume for longer than a moment at a time, dragging him up and down the sidewalk, and if there are unhappy, restless thoughts in Natsume’s mind, they don’t have time to settle. 

By the end of the first hour, Natsume is grinning as widely as Taki is, and when he says “Let’s go to the mall next! There’s a store I think you guys would  _love_ ,” Nishimura’s shoulders slump just a little bit, like a weight has been lifted and whatever task he assigned himself is finally done. 

Atsushi bumps his arm as the others move ahead, and says, “You’re a good friend to him.”

“Of course I am,” Nishimura scoffs. 

There’s an edge to it, almost. Nishimura meets the eyes of every stranger he passes, as though he can tell just by looking who might have hurt his friend here in the past. His kindness is never anything but kindness, but the ulterior motive Atsushi knows to look for is obvious in the almost hateful line of his mouth when Nishimura speaks up again.

“He’ll forget about this place,” Nishimura says with certainty. He may be a lot of things, not all of them good, but he’s not a liar. And in all the years Atsushi has known him, Nishimura has  _never_ looked as fierce as he does now. “He’ll forget all of it. If I have to take him on a cross-country roadtrip to make it happen – to every single place he was ever unhappy – then I  _will_. I’ll give him good memories to make up for all the bad ones, just you  _watch_ me.”

“I believe you,” Atsushi says, and he does. “But if you think the two of you are going on that roadtrip alone, you’ve got another think coming.” 

Natsume can keep his secrets. The rest of them will just do their best to make sure a day will come when those secrets don’t hurt him anymore.


	15. like a dream

Natsume’s hand is cool against his forehead. The rest of Satoru is burning up, but that one spot feels good.

“Nishimura, are you awake?” Natsume whispers in the dark. “I brought you medicine.”

And it’s kind of impossible for him to be here, but Satoru isn’t complaining. He hasn’t been at school in awhile and he’s missed everyone so much it sits like a physical weight on his chest. It feels like he hasn’t seen them in weeks.

“I took medicine already,” Satoru says, or tries to. It’s mostly word salad, lost against the side of his pillow, but he’s rewarded anyway. Natsume’s fingers card carefully through the sweat-soaked fringe hanging into his eyes. “How’d you get in here, Natsume?”

It’s late, and the moon is bright outside the window. Natsume is washed in silver and soft around the edges as he sits on the side of the bed with a cup in hand. The whole encounter feels like a dream.

“I flew,” dream Natsume says, smiling too gently to be truly teasing. He eases Satoru upright with a strength that defies his birdlike frame. “This medicine is special. I got it from a friend. It’ll make you better.”

The cup feels like earthenware, coarse against his fingers when Satoru lifts it to his mouth. He drinks something that tastes like old well water, and Natsume murmurs, “Is that all he needs, sensei?”

“We’ll stick around,” a gruff voice replies, sotto voce. “Still don’t know what cursed him in the first place. It might come back.”

It’s familiar, Satoru thinks. When Natsume was new to this town, and Satoru was cruel to him, it was just like this. Satoru remembers being lost in the woods and then being found, and hearing Natsume say  _“He’s special to me,”_ to that ugly cat he’s hardly without anymore. 

“Are you talking to your cat again?” Satoru mutters, squinting to see the fat thing at the foot of his bed. It blinks at him, unhurried. “That’s weird, Natsume. Talk to me instead.”

“You’re falling asleep sitting up,” Natsume replies patiently. “We’ll talk later. Just rest for now. I’m going to take care of you, okay?”

Grudgingly, Satoru slides back down, and says, “Just make sure you don’t get caught. Aniki’s been in here a couple times already tonight. I woke up and saw him watching me from the door.”

Natsume goes absolutely still, fingers clutching the hem of the blanket he was straightening. For all the sudden tension, his voice is smooth and unbothered when he says, “I thought you told me Kiyoshi was away for a few days. Didn’t he go on a trip with his friends?”

Did he say that? Satoru frowns, digging through his sluggish brain, and recalls Kiyoshi standing over his bed, ruffling his hair and telling him to ‘get better by the time I come back,’ lingering in the doorway like he was reluctant to leave.

But  _someone_ was here. Or was that part of a dream, too?

When he looks up, Natsume’s attention is on some far shadowed corner, and there’s an anger in his expression Satoru has never seen before.

“Get out of this house and stay away from this family,” Natsume commands, and he looks all but unsubstantial in the moonlight, but his voice is iron. “Or I’ll call every name in the book. There isn’t a place in this world you’ll be safe from me if you don’t  _let him go_.”

A wind blows through the open window, and Satoru squints as the curtains and bedclothes flutter wildly. A few loose papers get knocked around, and the shutter slides closed in the gust with a bang.

The room is darker than before, lit very barely by the dull orange glow of the overhead light and the space heater in the corner. Satoru can only just make out his friend by the bed, and levers himself up on an elbow.

“Who were you talking to?” he manages hoarsely. “What was that?”

“A bad dream,” says Natsume. “That’s all it was.”

He slips away like a ghost after that, between one moment and the next. Satoru is still blinking at the empty spot beside his bed as the window slides softly shut and the shutter rattles shut after it. 

But the ache in his head is receding, and it’s already easier to breathe. 

Maybe the strangest dream he’s ever had, but not the worst. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Satoru wakes up with the sun in the morning, feeling better than he has in days. His mother comes in to check on him and looks ready to cry when the thermometer reads 36.5 °C. 

“Let’s see how you feel after some breakfast,” she says, standing and folding away some of the damp towels and prescription bags littering Satoru’s bedside table. 

She pauses, and lifts a weathered clay cup off the nightstand. It’s the size of a large tea bowl, too big to fit comfortably in one hand, and she frowns at it. 

“Where did this come from?” 

Satoru can’t find his voice for a moment. He reaches for it, and his mother sets it in his outstretched hand. It feels exactly the way it did in his dream, down to the grainy, unfinished texture and the weight of it in his palm. 

He thinks of Natsume, soft and silver in the moonlight; standing over Satoru with kindness in his eyes, like there was nowhere else for him to be.

Satoru holds the cup closer and says, “It’s important. It belongs to someone important to me.”)


	16. what could have happened in five minutes?

Natsume falls abruptly, like his legs were swept out from under him, there one moment and gone the next. It’s a little funny, the way he’s always tripping over thin air, except that this time he lands with a sickening crunch. 

And doesn’t get up right away. 

And when Tanuma peels him off the ground, there’s a rock the size of Nishimura’s fist where Natsume’s face met the grass, wet and sticky with a smear of obscene red. 

Taki looks like she’s about to cry. Nishimura isn’t too far behind her. 

“Oh my god, does it hurt?” he asks, hovering uselessly while Tanuma mops blood off of Natsume’s chin with a handkerchief he dug out of his pocket. “It looks like it hurts. Oh my god,  _Natsume_.“ 

Natsume muffles something around Tanuma’s grip on his face and a  _mouthful of blood_  that sounds a little bit like “I’m okay.” Nishimura feels personally attacked by it. 

“So, from now on, you’re not allowed to say that while you’re bleeding. I’m putting it to a vote.” 

Looking dazed, Natsume nods in the manner of someone who has no idea what they’re nodding to. His cat returns at that point from whatever place it took off to so suddenly, ruffled and disgruntled. It makes a beeline straight for its wayward charge, crawling over Tanuma’s lap to perch on Natsume’s knee with a proprietary air. 

Nishimura half-expects Tanuma to tell the cat it’s in the way, but all he does is quietly adjust his hold on Natsume and work around it. He even says, “Ponta’s back, everything’s okay now,” like that’s supposed to be comforting. 

It  _is_ comforting, though, somehow. Natsume curls his hands around the fat cat looking visibly reassured, and tension Nishimura didn’t even notice drains out of his shoulders, and he even manages a crooked smile when Taki reaches over to card long bangs out of his eyes. 

“Oh – your tooth!” she says, stricken. “You must have knocked it out.”

Natsume looks like a missing tooth is the least of his concerns, and Nishimura is with him there, in all honesty. But Taki starts searching through the soft grass, insisting Nyanko-sensei come help her look, and some of the hard lines in Tanuma’s face start to ease away into warm relief when Natsume’s face is finally clean and the cut in his lip is no longer bleeding. 

He holds Natsume for a few seconds longer, anyway. Like there’s a tiny possibility that Natsume will fall again the moment he lets go. Nishimura pretends not to notice, carding absently around in the dirt for his friend’s missing tooth, and only glances up when a shadow falls over him. 

“I was gone for five minutes,” Kitamoto says, looking some complicated combination of exasperated and incredulous. “What could have happened in five minutes?”

“I tripped,” Natsume says thickly. He looks embarrassed, but nowhere near as mortified as he might have back when they were newly navigating friendship. He rubs a hand through his hair sheepishly, eyes light in the afternoon sun. “It’s always something, huh? I’m sorry.”

Taki smacks his knee with all the force of a falling autumn leaf. “Don’t you start, it’s not your fault you fell down. And look, I found your tooth!” She holds it up with a beaming grin, and Nishimura’s stomach twists as he takes in the tiny bloody thing between her fingers. 

“Ugh,” he says eloquently, and then, “That’s – that’s gross. You’re gross.”

Which isn’t something he would usually say to the girl of his dreams, and he winces the second it leaves his mouth. She gapes at him, and says, “I am not! The dentist will be able to put it back in if Touko-san takes him right away. Honestly, Nishimura, this is no time to be  _queasy.”_

“I’m not being queasy, I’m just – okay no, no, get it away from me! Taki!”

When Natsume stumbles again, it’s because he’s laughing too hard to walk properly. But this time, with Tanuma on one side of him and Kitamoto on the other, he’s in no danger of falling. 


	17. hopeless in their own way

Masayuki comes back from running a few quick errands for Nomiya-sensei just in time to witness Nishimura storm into the hall, fists balled at his sides and a thunderous expression on his face.

All of their classmates step prudently out of the way to let him go, and Masayuki can’t really blame them. Nishimura is a menace on a  _good_ day, let alone the nightmare he can be on a bad one. 

And if Masayuki were any wiser, he would leave well enough alone. 

Instead, he joins a cluster of students hanging by the door and asks, “What was that all about?”

“Oh, Tsuji-kun,” Suzuki says with an air of relief. “Well, um – I think he and Natsume-kun had an argument? Or something? It’s kind of hard to tell,” she flounders apologetically, but Masayuki nods in solemn understanding. It  _is_ hard to tell with them. Heartened, she goes on, “Natsume left as soon as it was time for lunch. Adachi-kun just mentioned a moment ago that he never saw Natsume come back, and then Nishimura-kun left, too.”

Okay, so it’s personal, which means it  _really_ isn’t Masayuki’s business. But after so many years of being responsible for his classmates, Masayuki feels like it kind of  _is_ his business when they’re unhappy or at odds with each other. 

He glances at the door. Suzuki sees right through him. “They usually hang out on the roof,” she says helpfully.

Masayuki thanks her, and heads for the roof.

He can’t help thinking it’s  _odd,_ that a fight with  _Natsume,_ of all people, could have led to this. Masayuki has never known Natsume to fight with anyone, for any reason, even in his own defense. And the guy plainly adores Nishimura, a sentiment that is more than fully returned, so it’s a frustrated Masayuki that climbs the stairs to the roof access door, wondering what on earth he’s  _missing._

Pushing the door open results in a squeal of tired hinges, and he gets a face full of the light rain that’s persisted all afternoon as he steps out into the damp gray air. 

Nishimura is popping open a retractable umbrella that looks suspiciously like Kitamoto’s, a look of fury on his face as he thrusts the clear plastic canopy over Natsume’s damp head. 

“You always forget an umbrella, you idiot. If you’re gonna sulk up here by yourself, you could at least do it without giving yourself pneumonia.” 

Natsume looks as wrong-footed as Masayuki feels. When Nishimura shoves the umbrella at him again, more forcefully this time, Natsume takes it slowly. 

“We’re all still going to Kitamoto’s after school,” Nishimura says shortly. There’s a really weird juxtaposition between his general tone and the words coming out of his mouth, between the scowl on his face and the umbrella he came all this way to give to the object of his temper. “It’s his dad’s birthday, so don’t even think about trying to skip out just ‘cause you’re pissed at me. I’ll leave you alone all night or whatever, okay? Just be there.”

Natsume has a fistful of Nishimura’s sleeve before he can take so much as a step away. His wide eyes are somehow wider now, his expression as transparent as Masayuki has ever seen it. Natsume and Nishimura both pause, and look down at Natsume’s hand as if they’re equally puzzled as to what it’s doing on Nishimura’s arm, and Natsume very bravely doesn’t let go. 

“I’m not angry at you,” he says, his voice only just carrying over the rain. “I’m angry at  _me._ I was trying to think of what to say to you when I went back inside, and I – I still don’t know where to start.”

There’s a long moment where Nishimura struggles with a complicated response, mouth pressed into a firm line, eyes narrow and uncertain. 

And Masayuki realizes that he hadn’t been acting on anger at all, not even for a moment – that it was something more like a confused cocktail of concern and hurt feelings and chagrin. 

Of course it would  _look_ angry on Nishimura, Masayuki thinks, who cares so much and so fiercely that his compassion resembles a creature with teeth. 

Sure enough, all the fight rushes out of Nishimura on the back of a sigh, and he runs the hand Natsume isn’t holding captive through his own hair. There’s a hint of a familiar smile on his face, sunny and stubborn and just a little soft, the way he’s always just a little soft for Natsume.

“Start with something like ‘Nishimura, I’d feel  _so_ much better if I shared my bento with you today,’ and we’ll just wing it from there.” 

Masayuki eases the noisy door shut again on the pleasant sound of Natsume’s surprised laughter and starts back downstairs, shaking his head at himself for being such a busybody. Those two may be hopeless in their own way, but there are  _some_ things they can figure out without the class president’s help. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tiny reminder that masayuki is just the given name i stuck tsuji with since he doesn't have one in canon !


	18. i'm only here to establish an alibi

Jun sees the man before Natsume does. He’s in a nondescript jacket and sunglasses, with a hat pulled low over his hair. Jun thinks it’s the smallest bit suspicious of him to be dressed like that and lingering outside the school gate, and keeps a shrewd eye on him as they come closer. 

Natsume catches sight of the stranger a moment later and gapes. 

“What are you doing here?” he demands, and Jun looks at her classmate sidelong in surprise. She’s never heard him talk to anyone but Nishimura like that before. 

So that means Natsume must either like this man a lot or hate him. Jun appraises him with narrow eyes, lingering protectively at Natsume’s side until she’s sure which it is.

The man’s smile is full and fond, for all that he raises his hands in a mocking shrug and says, “What, I can’t walk my favorite cousin home from school?”

Oh, Jun thinks, relieved. They’re family. In that light, their interaction makes much more sense, and she relaxes as Natsume scowls.

“Not when you live an hour away, you can’t. I told you, I can take care of myself. You don’t have to – to put yourself out like this.”

There’s a moment that passes wordlessly, and the man’s face is enigmatic with those dark glasses hiding whatever his eyes look like. He lifts a hand and settles it on Natsume’s hair, with such familiarity that Jun would have been able to guess they were family from that alone.

“Don’t yell at  _me,_ ” Natsume’s cousin says lightly. His voice is oddly familiar, though Jun is sure she’s never met him before. “I’m only here to establish an alibi.”

Natsume’s shoulders slump with sudden understanding. “Touko-san told you to check on me, didn’t she?”

Natsume’s foster dad went out of town for a work conference, and his mom went, too – and Jun thinks it makes sense that they wouldn’t want to pull Natsume out of school for a full week when he misses so much class already with how often he gets sick. And it makes sense that his parents would want a relative to at least look in on him in that time.

But from the way Natsume is staring up at his cousin, flushed and embarrassed, it might as well be an alien concept.

Jun aches for him, but his relative takes it all in stride. He sighs, and folds his arms performatively.

“I’ll admit, I’m here mostly for  _my_ sake,” he says, with an air of great misfortune. “It’s been so long since my last holiday that the production manager keeps threatening to have me banned from the set indefinitely.  _Me!_ Can you believe that? And he said holidays at home don’t count, for whatever ridiculous reason. So when Touko-san called, I just figured I might kill two birds with one stone. My motives are selfish, I’m afraid.“

Natsume blinks, all the fight going out of him. "You want to holiday here? With me?”

“You wouldn’t mind terribly, would you? It would really help me out.” 

Jun thinks it’s much more likely that this man, a young professional from the sound of things, juggled his busy schedule around until everything shook out in a way that would provide him with a week free to spend with his younger cousin.

And she thinks it’s so  _kind,_ and beams warmly when Natsume finally gives in with good grace.

“I guess,” he says wryly. “But Nishimura is already planning on spending most of the week at my house, so you’ll need to be prepared for that.” 

“I like Nishimura,” his cousin says decisively. “He has good taste in movies. I don’t believe I’ve met the charming vision beside you, though.”

Natsume remembers himself with a start, and apologizes effusively to Jun for leaving her out of the conversation. He introduces her to his cousin as “my friend Sasada, we’re in the same class,” and she’s touched that he considers her a friend. 

“It’s a pleasure,” the man says easily. He seems the type of person to get along with anyone who’s kind to the ones he loves. Natsume seems to be surrounded by that type of person. Taking off his sunglasses, and smiling at her with warm brown eyes, he goes on, “Thank you for taking care of Natsume.” 

His face is familiar. His  _eyes_ are familiar. And his voice – 

Natsume is red-faced by the time he finally drags his cousin away, and Jun can only stand there, gaping, as  _Natori Shuuichi_ laughs and lets himself be pulled along, with one last cheerful wave to her as he goes.


	19. hey, i like your laugh

People come and go. From an early age, this is a lesson Takashi learns well. 

He comes to Hitoyoshi when he’s fourteen, with a bag over his shoulder and a kind woman’s hand on his arm. They make sure he’s settled, make sure he likes his new room. They’re good people, and he won’t hold it against them when the day comes that they send him away.

(But the days stretch and accumulate. Each time he tears a shirt or breaks a dish, chased home by a shadowy figure or startled by a sneering face in the window, Touko shakes her head with an indulgent smile and gets out her thread and needle, Shigeru lifts the dangerous shards away before he can try to pick them up in his hands. They let him say he’s sorry, and then tell him there’s nothing to be sorry for. He’s never met anyone like them before.)

“It’s your first day tomorrow,” Touko-san says over dinner one night, halfway through his first week in their house. “Are you nervous, Takashi?”

He isn’t. He’s changed schools the way some people trade jackets for each turn of the weather. It isn’t hard to stand in front of a room full of strangers and introduce himself. People come and go, and Takashi is no different. He’s only going to be allowed to stay in this quiet town for as long as it takes to make a bad impression, and then he’ll be gone again.

So he keeps his eyes down, and smiles when someone says his name, and snatches sleep in unused classrooms instead of trying to make friends.

Somehow, friends find him anyway.

(Nishimura was heavy against his back, and it was a long walk back to town. Nyanko-sensei’s true form was a warm support for Takashi to lean against when it felt like his legs were about to give out. 

“Let me carry the brat,” the beastly yokai said, pinning him with a large gold eye. Takashi shook his head, hands tightening around Nishimura’s torn knees. 

“I can carry him,” he said. “I want to.”)

“You need to ask Touko-san for a bike,” Nishimura says one day, looking perilously close to a pout. He likes Takashi’s foster mother. He once spent hours and whole afternoons helping Takashi fold a thousand crooked, lopsided origami cranes for Touko’s sick friend. He seems to think Touko would pull a bike out of her pocket for Takashi if he said he wanted one. “That way we can hang out together after school.” 

Takashi smiles at him, meaning it. Nishimura is guileless and undaunted and kind, and Takashi is hard-pressed not to smile at him most days. “That’s okay, just go without me. I can’t ride a bike anyway.” 

Nishimura seems to need a moment to digest that. Beside him, Kitamoto is giving Takashi an unreadable look. “Why not?” 

“I never learned,” Takashi says easily enough. “It’s not something you can learn by yourself.”

And the very next day, his friends corner him after school again, and he finds himself walking between Nishimura and the bike Kitamoto is pushing along at his side, towards the riverside on the far edge of town. 

“No one will bother us here,” Kitamoto says cheerfully, and pats the seat. “Hop on, Natsume.”

They’re eager and earnest as they teach him what they both must have learned as little children, no trace of condescension in their faces when he gets a shaky start. Nishimura whoops and runs alongside the bike, beaming at him, and Kitamoto makes a sudden strangled noise and a grab for the handlebars, but it’s too late and Takashi is careening down the sloping riverbank. 

They scramble down after him, and the overturned bicycle’s tires make a gentle ticking noise as they spin through empty air. Takashi is knocked dizzy and breathless and bruised. He tips his head back and laughs. 

The day is golden and the grass is soft, and his friends settle on either side of him. When he looks over it’s to find Nishimura with a look of delighted wonder on his face, chin propped up in his hands, fingers cradling a bright smile.

“Hey,” he says, “I like your laugh.”

Takashi’s face is warmed by the sun, and by an unfamiliar feeling that twists his stomach into pleasant knots. Kitamoto laughs when he gets a look at his expression and won’t say why.

“Oh my,” Touko-san says when they pile inside the Fujiwara’s house. Their clothes are dirty, and the bike is banged up, and Takashi can barely lift his head as he steps out of his shoes – he should have called ahead, right? It’s rude to bring guests over without warning, isn’t it? – but then his foster mother is laughing. “What on earth have you three been up to? Come inside, tell me all about it.”

Shigeru-san folds his paper closed and smiles when they pile into the sitting room, greets Nishimura by name and introduces himself warmly to Kitamoto. Touko-san has snacks prepared already, as if she’s been waiting for him to come home. Nyanko-sensei is a heavy weight in his lap, purring idly in his sleep. 

“We can practice some more tomorrow,” Nishimura says, slanting a grin Takashi’s way. And tomorrow is Sunday, their day off, and surely Nishimura and Kitamoto have better things to do – but Kitamoto grins back and says he knows a great spot they could ride up to near the old Futaba Village, and Touko-san says it’s a wonderful idea, and she’ll pack them a picnic.

Takashi looks down at Nyanko-sensei, hiding hot eyes behind his hair. 

People come and go. But Takashi is an exception to every other rule – the ones that make fathers and mothers stay with their children, that make relatives smile and show him the way home and remember to make dinner – so maybe he can be the exception to this rule, too. For the first time, he wants to be. 

He wants to stay. 

(”Of course you do,” Nyanko-sensei scoffs, when Takashi dares say the words aloud into the dark of his bedroom. “I’ve never known a better cook than Touko-san. If you ever left this place, I’d have to leave with you, and we’d  _both_ miss out on her food. You’d better not let it happen, Natsume.” 

 _‘You won’t ever go alone’_  remains unsaid, but Takashi hears it anyway. 

And he hears it from Touko-san when she hands him his bento in the morning, packed with all the things he doesn’t remember telling her he liked, and from Shigeru when he makes time to walk home with Takashi after work, and from Nishimura, when he reaches over to brush fringe out of Takashi’s eyes with a petulant, “I want to see you when you talk. What if I miss another laugh?”

Takashi can’t help thinking that maybe it would be safe, this time, to believe it.)


	20. the world’s smallest, softest sentry

It’s late – well past the time they usually have dinner – and Touko is alone. Shigeru is accounted for; he called around lunchtime to let her know he’d be working late. Takashi, however, should rightly be at the kitchen table by now. 

Touko wrings her smock in her hands, glancing at the clock again in mounting concern, and decides then and there to buy that boy of hers a phone.

When a familiar voice calls out at the front door, it’s not the one she’s expecting. Touko rushes to invite them in, and gasps audibly when the door rattles open.

“Oh, my,” she whispers, pressing her hands to her mouth. 

Takashi is on his feet, but only barely. He’s supported by Kaname and Tooru on either side, his arms around their shoulders likely the only thing keeping him upright. He’s flushed as if with high fever, eyes glassy behind an untidy fringe. 

“Touko-san,” he says when he sees her, his smile a rush of relief. 

“Sorry about this,” Kaname says around a torn lip, bruising impressively around his left eye. Touko’s heart is in her throat, but the boy dithers on her doorstep as though unsure of his welcome at this hour. “I – we should have called.” 

“What on earth  _happened?”_ Touko demands, all but pulling them inside. Takashi’s silly cat comes in at their heels, eyes bright and fur bristling. “How did the two of you get hurt like this?”

“We fell,” Tooru says promptly, as if there isn’t an angry red welt along the side of her face. She only has eyes for Takashi, stooping to pull his sneakers off and line them carefully along the side of the entrance hall. “As for Natsume-kun, he took a bad turn. He started to feel ill and wanted to come home.”

He’s still prone to these episodes, but it sounds too much like a convenient excuse in this light. Kaname, a young man growing into his height and wide shoulders, carries Takashi up the stairs, and Tooru sets out his futon with unending care. They’re both comfortable in his bedroom, and look as though they’d linger much longer if not for all of Touko’s questions. 

“I promise, we’re okay,” Tooru says brightly, waving her hands. “Just a little accident.”

Halfway out the door already, Kaname adds, “We’ll come by tomorrow to check on him, if it’s not an inconvenience.” 

They say goodnight to Touko and Takashi’s cat and leave, not fifteen minutes after they arrived in the first place, and too quickly for Touko to put her foot down and demand they submit to the contents of her first aid kit. 

“What would Shigeru say,” she despairs, sponging Takashi’s forehead with a cool compress. Takashi blinks at her, halfway lucid. “I half-wish you had stayed at Kaname’s house and called for me there. It didn’t do you any favors, being out in the cold night air like this.”

“I  _had_ to come home,” Takashi says. “To make sure you’re safe.” 

“Oh, Takashi, of course I am – “ she begins to say, but he shakes his head, side to side on his pillow. 

“I made them angry.” 

“Who, sweetheart?”

“The monsters,” he tells her, his voice slurring. “The ones only I can see.”

Touko sits very still, her head busy with uncertainty. 

Monsters, he says, and the first thing Touko’s mind goes to is the unkind relative who tried to pawn Takashi off to another family at a funeral. The medical charts the family doctor showed her, pages of broken bones and suspicious bruises. The unkind people who got their hands on him before Shigeru brought him home to stay.

Then she thinks of the white crow, from that sunny afternoon so long ago. Try as she might, straining her eyes after the familiar crow with its crooked wing feathers, she couldn’t find its partner anywhere in that wide blue sky. 

She glances down at him, unsure.  

Takashi has grown in the three years he’s lived with her, but he’ll always be the wide-eyed boy standing in her doorway with a stray cat in his arms. He looks at her with those moonlike eyes now the same way he did then. 

“I’ll keep the bad ones away,” he promises. “Me and Nyanko-sensei, we’ll keep you safe.” 

Touko brushes the hair back from Takashi’s pale face, and the misgivings in her heart soften into a much more familiar fondness at the way the boy leans into her hand. 

“Of course you will.”

He slips into sleep before she can think of anything else to say, and then it’s only Touko and Nyankichi left in the dim bedroom. 

Dinner is going cold in the kitchen. Touko can’t bring herself to get up.

“I see the two of you have some explaining to do in the morning,” Touko says. She feels faint and overwhelmed, but her voice remains gentle, her fingers in Takashi’s hair steady. “Watch over him tonight, kitty. Our boy deserves a nice, long sleep.”

Nyankichi blinks slowly, as if considering her. Then he dips his head in what could have been, to the overly imaginative, a  _nod._ She watches as the cat moves from her side to Takashi’s, curling into a comfortable loaf at his elbow, like the world’s smallest, softest sentry.

And she smiles. 


	21. a promise is a promise

“I don’t think I want to do this,” Natsume says for the third time in as many minutes. He’s clutching Satoru’s arm hard enough to bruise. Satoru doesn’t mind.

“You promised,” Satoru points out mildly. He won’t joke, not when Natsume is this anxious, but he can’t help but add, “And it’ll make me feel better about you falling off bridges.”

“I don’t fall off bridges that much,” comes the immediate, heated reply.

“Okay, but the fact that you do at  _all_  is enough to make me worry.”

And there’s nothing Natsume can say to that, really, but he doesn’t budge from the edge of the pool. His fingers, wrapped around Satoru’s arm, are trembling. 

“I don’t,” Natsume says quietly, and stops. Visibly steeling himself, more courageous than anyone Satoru has ever met, he goes on, “I don’t like pools.”

“How come?” Satoru asks carefully.

“There was. When I was in grade school, there was a school trip. One of the older kids pushed me into the deep end of the wave pool, and I – “

He doesn’t finish. Obviously he was okay, because he’s here and holding Satoru’s arm with a hand that shakes, but something like that makes a mark on a kid, especially a kid like the kid Natsume was.

Satoru looks out over the water, the little kids playing with their parents, their own friends waiting patiently for them in the shallow end, and he says, “I’d never push you in, Natsume. I’d never make you do something you didn’t want to do.”

Natsume is quick to nod. “I know.”

Satoru can’t imagine it – looking at Natsume with the ugly intent to hurt him.  _Natsume_ , of all people, gentle and reckless and giving and kind. Making a promise that terrified him, coming all the way to the pool before he finally balked at the edge, looking sorry and small and sad.

“Let’s go down to the river instead,” Satoru says abruptly, turning to face him. He shifts, pulling his arm until Natsume’s hand slips down his wrist, and then Satoru wraps it up tightly in his own. Squeezing their fingers together, willing that dread out of his friend’s face, he adds, “You’re way more comfortable in weird places like that, anyway. Probably from falling off so many bridges.”

Natsume colors and shoves at him, but he’s relieved when Satoru raises his arm to call their friends over to the side of the pool and explains the change of plans. Natsume is a creature of the country air and sun-saturated afternoon, and smiles when they step back outside into warm July.

“Thank you,” he says. Satoru winks at him. 

“Still gonna teach you how to swim, though. A promise is a promise.”

Natsume rolls his eyes, as human as he is quiet mountain spirit, and Satoru is abruptly, impossibly grateful that Natsume didn’t drown in the pool that day when he was little. 

He’s so glad nothing managed to break Natsume before he came to this place, ruin him before he came  _home_  here, before Satoru had a chance to know him, and hold his hand, and show him a softer, kinder side of every bad thing he’s ever seen. 


	22. it's not like that here

It wasn’t Natsume’s fault. That much is obvious.

They were in the kitchen when that fat cat went crazy, jumping over the table and knocking everything to the floor. Then a wild gust of wind filled the room and slammed the kitchen window closed on its way out again, nearly breaking the glass and all but knocking Satoru over. 

By the time Satoru’s mother runs in to see what all the noise was about, the room is a mess – and it had  _nothing_ to do with Natsume, but he’s still as mortified as if he’d wrecked the place himself. 

“I’m so sorry,” Natsume says quickly, all but wringing his hands. His cat is its usual self again, sitting lazy and well-behaved at his feet. “I’ll – I’ll pay for everything, I swear it won’t happen again. Please don’t call my- my parents.”

He looks hunted, but more than that he looks certain. As though he’s been right here in this exact spot a hundred times before and it always plays out the same way. 

Satoru stands up sharply. 

“You’re not paying for anything,” he retorts. “He didn’t do anything, mom. We left the window open to let in the breeze and this  _ridiculous_ wind came through. It scared his cat and messed the room up.”

“It tore down the laundry I had hung out to dry, too,” she replies, giving Natsume an odd look. “Kiyoshi is out there now, gathering everything for another wash. Are you boys okay?”

“We’re fine,” Satoru says over Natsume in a loud voice, when it looks like Natsume is going to say something stupid. “We’ll get the kitchen cleaned up, don’t worry about it.” 

His mother affords him a quick smile, another thoughtful glance at his pale-faced friend, and then hurries back down the hall. Satoru rounds on Natsume the second she’s gone. 

“Stop taking the blame for stuff that has nothing to do with you,” he says fiercely. “My mom may be a piece of work sometimes, but she’d never throw you out or call Touko-san to get you in trouble over a few broken plates.”

The wincing look on Natsume’s face tells Satoru quite clearly that he doesn’t believe that. His eyes are that deep, dark color that makes it impossible to tell what he’s feeling, but Satoru hasn’t been his friend for the better part of two years for nothing. 

He knows that Natsume couldn’t ride a bike when he moved here. He knows Natsume had never been fishing or beetle hunting until Kitamoto and Satoru took him on a whim. He still unpacks his bento carefully at lunch time, like there’s treasure beneath the furoshiki, packed in with the fish and rice and umeboshi. 

Natsume has never told Satoru anything about the places he came here from, but he’s sixteen now and still sometimes watches people the way the stray cats around Satoru’s neighborhood do, when they’re not sure if an outstretched hand means food or a swift strike; wary, endlessly cautious, and so hungry they inch forward despite themselves. 

And it says something, he thinks, that it’s been two years and Natsume is still inching forward. 

“You’re waiting for the catch, but there isn’t one,” Satoru finally says, as close as he’s ever come to talking about the things Natsume doesn’t talk about. “It’s not like that here.”


	23. are you even real?

The next time Touko sees Sana-chan, she’s armed to the teeth with photos.

Shigeru got that old camera of his working after all, and the album Touko passes across the table to Sana-chan is full of candids - Takashi on the porch playing with Nyankichi, Takashi’s friends sprawled across his bedroom floor the morning after a big sleepover, Takashi laughing with Shigeru over a sink of sudsy dinner dishes.

Sana-chan flips through the pictures with all the enthusiasm Touko could have hoped for, a smile filling her round face as she gushes “what a handsome boy!” and “your house must be so lively these days!” and “I can’t wait to meet him!”

And Touko is warmed all the way home, resolving to ask Shigeru and Takashi what they would think of having Sana-chan and her family over for dinner in the near future.

As if summoned by the thought, Takashi’s voice drifts through the autumn air towards her from the riverbank. Curiously, Touko steps off the road into the grass to follow it to the source - Takashi  _did_ say a friend was visiting from the mountain, but surely he knows his friend would be welcome at the house - and steps to the edge of the sloping embankment, peering down.

She spots him right away, smiling a little at the way he sticks out against the dull color of the river, with his fair hair and pastel pink jacket. Takashi is sitting with two of his friends, the three of them grouped around the edge of a strange circle drawn in the damp clay, and they’re pink with laughter and bright-eyed in the warm afternoon, and talking to -

a little green person. With a beak, and tortoise-like carapace, and webbed hands, and a wet plate atop its head amidst a mop of tangled, seaweed-green curls. It hands Takashi a flapping fish and says, “I caught this for you, boss!”

“Thank you,” Takashi says dryly, and tosses the fish back into the water without ado.

 _Oh,_  Touko thinks, hands flying to her mouth in surprise. And the first thing she thinks of, impossibly, is the crow.

 _“I’ve never seen a white one before,”_ Takashi said that day, guileless and unguarded as he smiled into the sky at a creature Touko couldn’t seem to find.  _“It’s beautiful.”_

“I can’t believe it!” Tooru says brightly, jolting Touko out of her shock. The girl is clapping her hands together in delight, moving to her knees and bowing politely in greeting. “I’ve always wanted to meet a kappa!”

The creature hurries to follow suit, bowing low to Tooru in return. Touko watches, eyes wide, as Takashi says, “No don’t - ” and the water spills from the plate on the kappa’s head into the earthy clay underfoot.

The creature flails, making a piteous noise, and then it seems to be trapped in place, small torso curved over the ground, quivering. Takashi gets up with a long-suffering sigh.

“Some of the myth is true, but not all of it,” he explains, as though he’s explaining particularly complicated schoolwork. He cups his hands in the river, and carries cool water back with him. His friends watch avidly as Takashi wets the kappa’s headplate again, and delight when the little thing springs back up to its feet.

“He won’t attack you,” Takashi goes on calmly, “he’s a little sillier than his cousins. His arms aren’t particularly weak, either, but he’s not very good at wrestling, and as far as I can tell he doesn’t care much for cucumbers. And he tends to stray too far from his river. If you ever see me dumping water out on the ground for no apparent reason - ”

“We have,” Kaname says with a smile he doesn’t bother trying to hide. “We just didn’t ask.”

Takashi blinks, and something soft and uncertain graces the delicate features of his face. He rubs a hand through his hair and says, “You can ask. From now on, I mean.”

The spirit between them steps out of the circle toward the water’s edge and disappears from view with a mighty splash - Touko’s hands are still hovering over her mouth, and she manages to muffle the startled noise that threatens to give her away.

Takashi flicks water out of his eyes with a scowl, and his friends laugh - and oh, but they’re not surprised in the  _least_ by all this, and Tooru even has something of a little picnic set up at her side. Touko can hear her murmuring “I feel so  _silly_ for bringing all this squash, now. I read  _so much_  about kappa last night, I was  _sure_ he’d like it.”

And Touko can’t help but think of Takashi as the boy she first met, not so long ago - all alone in the middle of a cold night. How thin and pale and colorless he was then, lifting glass eyes to meet hers and looking straight through her at something else.

He is  _always_ looking straight through at something else. Whether it’s crows, or kappa, or something less lovely, something less harmless, Takashi has probably been able to see them since he was very, very young. And while it doesn’t excuse the people who mistreated him, doesn’t forgive them in the slightest, Touko can suddenly understand, just a  _little_ bit, why her sweet, gentle, giving boy had such a hard time growing up - was never quite wanted, never quite normal.

And her heart aches, watching how  _easily_ Takashi can talk about the river spirit (one that is clambering back into the muddy circle with an armful of fish) and how  _hard_ it is for Takashi to switch gears and talk to his friends about trusting them.

It is always so hard for him. Touko is making her way down the grassy slope even before the kappa points towards her and says, “Boss? Who’s that?”

And while Tooru and Kaname spring to their feet as if electrified - both of them moving, to hide the kappa from view and scuff out the strange circle respectively - Takashi looks frozen in place. His hands are limp where they were resting on his folded knees, face so pale he might have been sculpted out of snow.

He looks like someone watching their world end.

 _Well_. Touko may be very new at this - may not have the experience Atsushi’s mother has at righting wrongs and mending impossible hurts - and she’s  _certain_ they don’t make parenting books for a child’s dealings with yokai - but now isn’t the time to worry.

Now is the time to kneel next to her son, tucking her skirt in neatly, neverminding all the mud - to ignore the way his frightened expression digs sharp fingers into her heart, and reach out to him with a gentle hand.

Takashi flinches, and it hurts her, but it’s a selfish hurt and one she buries quickly. The short time he’s been with her won’t be enough to unlearn the lessons he’s been taught up until now, and she can’t afford to forget that. She doesn’t let herself falter, and only continues until her fingers are cradling the soft curve of his cheek, and Touko waits patiently for Takashi to find the courage to look at her.

Kaname and Tooru are holding their breath. After one long minute passes into two, Takashi lifts his eyes.

He’s transparent to her now, the way he didn’t used to be. Guileless and unguarded, the way he was when he saw something beautiful in their backyard. And if this secret world of his can give him beautiful things as much as it takes away from him, then Touko can find it in herself to make peace with it.

Touko looks over, and finds the kappa peering over Kaname’s shoulder - its webbed hands pressed into the back of his shoulder, leaning up on the tips of its feet to peer at Touko. The creature’s eyes are wide and curious, very much like the eyes of the children kappa are said to eat. Touko can’t find it in herself to fear the little thing, and looks back at Takashi with that knowledge clear in her smile.

“And I thought you told me you’ve introduced me to  _all_ of your friends,” she scolds lightly, teasing him. “After Kei and Katsumi, I was sure I had met everyone. You really are such a popular boy.”

Kaname and Tooru let out shaky breaths, and beam at one another, and then at Touko. Takashi looks as though he’s forgotten how to speak, and so Touko leans back and takes her hand away.

“Actually, I have a question!” When she tilts her head towards the kappa, it points at itself, as if to make sure it’s the one she’s addressing. It makes Touko smile. “Yes, you. You know, I used to hate ginger when I was a child, but my father could always convince me to eat it by telling me it would ward kappa away. Is that true?”

The kappa considers that seriously for a moment, then says, “It’s true. I hate ginger.”

“I wonder if you’re the best kappa to ask,” Kaname puts in dryly, “since we found out you’re not good at wrestling, don’t so much as  _pretend_ to keep to your river, and have never tried to drown a single human.”

The kappa squawks, as if in offense. With its handfuls of wriggling fish, the sight is both cute and comical. Touko feels herself warming to the odd creature, with its human mannerisms and the way it seems more comfortable with this group of mortal youngsters than its own kind.

Tooru draws its attention to her picnic basket, and Kaname follows them to it - both children well-versed in the art of subtlety, giving Touko room to sit quietly with Takashi in an unobtrusive, and undemanding silence.

“There are more like it, aren’t there?” Touko says after a moment. “More spirits like this one?”

Takashi’s head jerks in a nod. Touko hums.

“And they’re not all kind to you, are they?”

“Not - ” He swallows, and tries again. “Not all of them. They’re the same way people are. Different personalities and experiences. It’s not - I can’t lump them together. They’re not kind or unkind, they’re just alive, in a different way than we are.” His eyes dart to Touko, but only for a second, and then he’s back to staring at his hands. “I know it’s - I know it’s strange. I know it’s a lot. I’m sorry.”

“Oh,  _Takashi_ ,” Touko says, aching for him. “All those times you came home with dirty clothes, how easily you seem to get hurt. This is your home now, and I want it to be safe for you. Is there anything I can do? Should we get talismans for the house? Oh, but then your friendly spirits couldn’t see you, could they?” She presses a hand to the side of her face, truly feeling out of her depth. “Oh, I should ask Shigeru-san. He’ll know what to do about all of this, he’s much more level-headed than I am. Don’t worry though, Takashi,” Touko adds, trying to sound sure of herself. “Whatever you need, you’ll have it.”

Takashi finally gives up the careful study of his hands, and stares at her fully. His eyes are moonlike beneath his long, untidy fringe as he whispers, “Are you even  _real_?”

And Touko wraps up the pain in her chest and ties a fierce knot around it, to unpack and shed tears over later, when she can afford to grieve for all the things Takashi can’t seem to bring himself to trust.

For now, she gives her son a smile.

“You believe in such impossible things,” she tells him, full of fondness and faint anger and sorrow and love. “Surely you can believe in this, too.”

Takashi ducks his head, and when he moves he’s moving closer instead of farther away; leaning into her side with all the weight of a warm, shuddering shadow. If he’s crying, he’s utterly silent about it. Touko rests her cheek in the softness of his hair and watches the odd and peaceful picture Tooru and Kaname and the yokai make, digging through a picnic basket and sharing treats with one another from within the far side of the circle.

“You know, the timing of this is uncanny,” Touko says playfully, aiming to lighten the mood just a little. “I was going to ask you if you wanted to meet a friend of mine from middle school. I showed her my photo album today during our lunch date, and she wants to get to know you! Her name is Sana-chan, and she has a boy about your age. Unfortunately, it probably won’t be quite as exciting as meeting a kappa, but I think it will be still be plenty of fun.”

“Of course, if it’s no trouble, I’d like to meet her, too,” Takashi says immediately, as eager to please as always. And then, after a moment’s pause, he goes on, “Wait. You showed her the photo album?  _Touko-san_ , most of those pictures are of  _me_. You didn’t let her see the one of Nishimura kissing me, did you? Touko-san?”

Touko presses a hand to her mouth to hide her smile and admits, “That one was Sana-chan’s favorite.”

Takashi lifts his head to gape at her, every inch an aggrieved, embarrassed teenager where a wounded, world-weary creature was hunkered moments ago. “Touko-san! It’s bad enough that Kitamoto sent it to  _everyone we know_  - ”

“What’s a photo album?” the kappa asks, its hands full of crumbling croquettes it seems to have traded its fish for. Tooru looks up with a wicked gleam in her eyes, and Kaname seems to be the only one willing to commiserate with poor Takashi, shooting him a sympathetic look as Takashi watches in horror Touko haul the album out of her bag cheerfully.

“You’re carrying it around with you?”

“Come over here and see, Kappa-san,” Touko says, and even moves forward to the edge of the circle so the little green creature can sit beside her and lean in to stare at the glossy pages that lay open in her lap. “Isn’t my Takashi handsome? Look at how photogenic he is.”

“Ooh,” Tooru says eagerly, peering from Touko’s other side, “are some of these new?”

“What’s photogenic?” the kappa asks, and Takashi buries his face in Kaname’s shoulder.

But he seems to give into laughter after a moment, his shoulders shaking. It’s a soft sound that grows louder, until Takashi is tipping his head back and falling into it, and Touko  _wishes_ she had the camera with her.


	24. i can't leave him alone

“It’ll be easier now,” the lucky cat said. 

“I’m sorry?” Natsume replied, without looking up. 

Madara watched his human charge with narrow eyes. The green in them was closer to black in the falling dusk, and his smiling face was more serious than the situation seemed to call for. 

“When you’ve been possessed once, it opens the door for possessions down the road,” he said. “Since yokai follow you wherever you go, and you spend most of your time with that brat, any harmful spirit would have plenty of opportunities to get their hands on him again.” 

Natsume nodded but he didn’t once lift his hand off Nishimura’s hair, his fingers carding carefully through the fringe on the other boy’s forehead. Nishimura shifted closer to the touch now and then, without waking, and something in Natsume’s face softened each time he did.

“I can’t leave him alone, sensei,” Reiko’s grandson said quietly. “I should, I know I should – it would be better for him, safer – but I like him too much. I can – I’ll protect him. Can’t I?”

Madara considered him for a long moment, and then snorted indelicately. He climbed to his feet with a mighty stretch and said, “Don’t be more of a fool than you can help, Natsume! We can’t leave the brat alone now, that would be asking for trouble. The yokai can  _smell_ you on him, they’d seek him out with or without you around.”

When he circled Nishimura to sit at Natsume’s side, Natsume’s free hand fell to petting him immediately, the way a well-trained student should. 

“No, the only thing to do now is keep him closer, keep an eye on things,” Madara went on, and pretended not to notice the expression on Natsume’s face. “Otherwise  _anything_ might happen. Looks like you’re stuck with him, brat.” 

“Thank you, sensei,” Natsume said with feeling, every bit as if Madara had done him some favor. The lucky cat huffed and washed his ear. Ridiculous humans, and their ridiculous sentiment. 

But when the evening shadows stretched longer, and it became clear Nishimura wouldn’t wake on his own – when Natsume gathered the other boy against his back, to carry him the handful of miles into town – Madara took his true form and moved to Natsume’s side.

“Lean on me,” he said, and looked out over the trees so he wouldn’t have to look at Natsume’s fond smile. 


	25. no matter what, you're a good one

Tanuma is exuding calm in waves where he crouches an arm’s length away from their shaken friend, and Satoru is doing his best to mimic him. 

Even if calm is the  _last_ thing he’s feeling right now.

“What the hell?” he whispers under his breath, and Kitamoto shakes his head slowly, dark eyes wide and worried where they’re trained on Natsume. But Satoru feels panicky and prickly, and that non-answer isn’t good enough. “I don’t know what’s going on, Atsushi, he’s – he looks really scared, I don’t – “

Nothing  _happened._ One minute they were walking home, making plans for the weekend, and the next a violent wind went screaming through the street for what felt like an  _hour –_ and when it cleared and Satoru could stand up straight without being blown sideways, Natsume was on his knees with his arms wrapped around his head, flinching violently away when Kitamoto reached out to help him up. 

“Are you okay for me to touch you?” Tanuma’s voice is gentle, almost mild, as he waits with endless patience for Natsume to hear him. “You can nod or shake your head. I won’t touch you if you don’t want me to.”

Another gust of wind has Satoru tensing automatically, but this one is there and gone again quickly, and as if on cue, Natsume’s fat cat comes waddling across the road from the bushes a second later. It pushes its head under Natsume’s arm with a grunt, and Natsume pulls it into his lap with a strangled-sounding sob. 

Satoru’s eyes burn with sympathetic tears, and he scoots closer despite Kitamoto grabbing at him to keep him back, because he can’t  _help_ it. 

Natsume is so cheerful these days that it’s almost easy to forget how quiet and thoughtful he used to be. Napping in unused classrooms as though he couldn’t sleep at home, avoiding big groups even if it meant eating lunch by himself behind the school building, showing up to class with cuts and bruises. The Fujiwaras  _love_ him, Satoru can see that for himself every day in the lovingly packed bento boxes Natsume unwraps at lunchtime, in the way Natsume lights up when he talks about them – but not everyone is the Fujiwaras, and there’s a  _reason_ Natsume moved around so much before they took him in, isn’t there?

That wind was so loud, and so rough. It almost knocked Satoru over. Maybe it reminded Natsume of something else, something bad he lived through that left a mark on him. 

“You’re okay,” Tanuma is telling him quietly. “It’s not here anymore.”

Natsume nods against his cat’s calico fur, and he keeps his face buried there as Tanuma wraps solid arms around him. Satoru is still crawling over, and Natsume lifts his head off of Tanuma’s shoulder to glance his way. 

“That wind was  _insane,”_ Satoru informs him. “I’m pretty sure the only way I’m going to come back from that is with Touko-san’s cooking. So unless you want me to pass out right here and probably die, you’re taking me home with you and feeding me.” 

It makes Natsume laugh, the sound soft and hoarse and surprised right out of him, and Satoru has never been prouder of producing a laugh than he is right now. Tanuma sits back, smiling with shadows in his eyes, and Natsume takes the hand Satoru offers him without flinching, letting himself be pulled back onto his feet. 

“Well, if you put it that way,” he says with a crooked smile, “what kind of friend would I be if I said no?”

“A good one,” Satoru assures him, holding onto his hand a tiny bit tighter, for a moment longer than makes sense. “No matter what, you’re a good one.”


	26. you look terrible

"You look terrible. I mean, you look beautiful as ever, but also super sick."

Touko presses a hand to the side of her face and laughs. It’s hard to feel self-conscious when Takashi is pink-faced and stammering an apology that’s hard to make out, that sounds something like  _“can’t believe I said ‘terrible’”._

“I am feeling a bit under the weather today,” she admits. “I would lay down, but I need to start preparing dinner if I want it to be ready for Shigeru when he gets home.”

Takashi blinks at her, and then his eyes stray past her face to a point behind her shoulder – the kitchen counter, where the groceries are laid out. Hardly a moment goes by before his amber eyes gleam and his shoulders square, and he says, “I’ll make dinner. Really,” he adds, before Touko can so much as open her mouth, “I used to make dinner at one of the other places I lived. I can do it. I  _want_ to.”

Her heart is simply too big to fit comfortably in her chest, Touko decides, folding her hands together firmly against the ache that sits behind her breastbone. Takashi is so stubborn and so willing, and so eager to be helpful. She smiles at him, ignoring the silly prickling at the corners of her eyes.

“Thank you, Takashi. That would be wonderful,” she manages, and watches something radiant bloom in her child’s face. 

(And an hour or so later, she’ll wake from a light nap and follow the sounds of cooking and conversation down the hall into the doorway of the kitchen. Shigeru’s briefcase and overcoat are draped over one of the kitchen chairs and her husband is standing next to Takashi at the counter, sleeves rolled up and tie thrown over his shoulder.

“This is her favorite recipe,” Shigeru is saying. “I’m not sure our attempt will taste anything close, but it’s worth a try, right?”

“Right,” Takashi says brightly. He’s flecked with egg batter and tiny pieces of diced scallions, and pushes bangs out of his eyes with the back of his wrist. “I think she’ll like it no matter what.”

Oh, I will,she thinks, unable to bring herself to interrupt the two of them, a hand pressed against the happy ache in her heart. I  _absolutely_ will.)


	27. so obvious it goes without saying

Takashi doesn’t know Shigeru is home early when he comes in – which is probably the only reason he slams the door closed behind him hard enough that the panes rattle, and kicks off his shoes with more force than necessary.

Shigeru blinks, and sets his book aside as the boy storms around the corner like a small hurricane.

“ – can’t  _believe_ him, how many times do I have to  _say_ it?” he’s muttering fiercely to the fat cat trotting by his ankles. “Sometimes he makes me want to just – oh.”

Shigeru very barely manages to bite back a smile at the way Takashi stops dead in the doorway of the kitchen. Nyangoro crosses the room at a saunter, hopping up to settle on the seat of Touko’s empty chair and tucking his paws in comfortably.

“Nyangoro has the right idea,” Shigeru says, nodding towards Takashi’s chair. “Come and sit. I’ll lend a better ear than your cat probably will.”

There’s an obvious war going on in Takashi’s golden eyes, but teenage temper wins in the end. He shrugs off his school bag and sits with a thump, simmering with a very rarely shown irritation.

Intrigued despite himself, Shigeru watches as the usually mild-mannered Takashi struggles visibly with what he wants to say and what he thinks he shouldn’t. He’s frowning deeply, the closest he’s over come to scowling at his foster father and Shigeru shouldn’t be delighted by it, he knows he shouldn’t. Most parents probably don’t yearn to see their children throw fits and act out, but he has long since accepted that he and Touko aren’t most parents.

“Friend troubles?” Shigeru offers after a moment. Takashi flicks a quick look at him through his fringe.

“ _Tanuma.”_

“Ah,” Shigeru says mildly. Boy troubles, then.

“He’s – I’m – ” Takashi does scowl now, down at his hands. “I know he’s my friend, and that he means well, but he can be so  _infuriating._ ”

“That sounds about right.” Shigeru laughs at the look Takashi gives him. “You’re both so stubborn, I’m amazed you haven’t butted heads until now.”

“We have,” Takashi admits, “but – it usually doesn’t  _bother_ me like this. I don’t know what’s different this time.”

And Shigeru doesn’t know how to explain to him what it is that’s changed. There aren’t words, or at least none that he can find, to shape the difference in the Takashi they brought home for the first time – that soft-spoken and respectful boy who was hardly more than a polite ghost gracing the quiet corners of their house, always doing his best to stay out of their way and keep his problems to himself – and the one stewing across the table from him now, sure of his welcome even when he’s not at his best.  

The change is night and day. Shigeru hides a smile behind the rim of his teacup, listening as his son vents his frustration on the room.

“ – just wish he would  _listen_ when I tell him I don’t need help. I can take care of myself. And I know I shouldn’t be this way. He’s my friend, and I’m lucky to have him. But  _still –_ “

“Surely you know better than to think friendship is without its faults,” Shigeru says, raising an eyebrow. “Atsushi and Satoru argue as much as any two people I’ve ever met, and I don’t doubt they’ve been good friends for most of their lives.”

Takashi blinks. “Well,” he says, at length. Then, “That’s different.”

“It isn’t. Not in the least.” 

It will bother him, if he lets it, that at sixteen years old, Takashi is still so new to maintaining these relationships with the people in his life who care about him that a fight with a friend could leave him so off-kilter.

Shigeru puts the thought on the shelf for the time being, to take down and reexamine later. For now, the ire is leaking slowly out of Takashi’s face, leaving only dawning surprise behind, and Shigeru can’t help being warmly amused.

“I know that neither of you are the type to squabble over something trivial,” he says. “You don’t have to agree on everything all the time. As a matter of fact, that’s probably impossible, no matter how close you are. All you can do is respect his opinion, and try to find a middle ground.”

Takashi is quiet for a long time, studying the table beneath his hands. It’s only when Nyangoro starts to purr that the tension bleeds out of his shoulders, and Takashi sighs.

“You’re right,” he finally says, looking worn out by the whole thing. “He’s still annoying,” Takashi adds quickly, making Shigeru need to hide another smile. “But he means well. He always means well.” The admission gentles him, warming the color in his face and adding softness to his eyes. “I should apologize to him.”

It’s  _as_ important to be apologized  _to_ , Shigeru thinks, perhaps unfairly. Takashi is sorry for so many things, and forgives endlessly – even when he has nothing to be sorry for, even when there’s too much to forgive. Takashi’s friends are good and kind, but they’re still just kids, and kids can be hurtful and take advantage –

“Excuse me,” a familiar voice calls at the door, “is anyone home?”

Takashi blinks wide eyes at Shigeru from his side of the table. Shigeru returns the wide-eyed look with one of his own, and they both smile.

Kaname is a tall, imposing figure as he steps into the room, but his dark eyes are kind, and his smile for Takashi is impossibly gentle. There’s a stubborn spark in his expression that matches the one Shigeru’s son wears almost perfectly, softened by regret and fondness, and Shigeru picks up his book again peacefully as the boys talk quietly down the hall.

“If anyone in the world is going to take advantage of Takashi,” he says to Nyangoro, comforted by the thought, “they’ll have to go through Kaname to do it.”

The cat snorts, and doesn’t bother opening its eyes. Some things  _are_ so obvious they go without saying, Shigeru decides, and smiles at the sound of warm laughter from the next room. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> more of Best Anime Dad shigeru, bcus it was sorely lacking in this series (•̀ᴗ•́)و ̑̑


	28. he's ours now

Nishimura can’t remember  _ever_  being angrier.

“You can’t talk to him like that,” he bites out, surging an irate step forward. Kitomoto puts a hand on his arm, and he only just barely manages not to yank away. “Who do you think you are?”

The handful of kids standing opposite them – unfamiliar school uniforms, but definitely close to Nishimura’s group in age – look wrong-footed by the explosive reaction. The jeering and tittering have stopped cold, and both parties eye the other in wary tension.

“Nishimura,” Natsume starts, but Tanuma and Kitamoto both shoot him significant, pointed glances, and his quiet protest doesn’t go any further. He clutches his fat cat a little closer to his chest, and looks like he wants the ground to open up and swallow him whole.

“We knew Natsume in elementary school,” one of the strangers volunteers abruptly. “We were just teasing him.”

“Sounded a lot more like bullying to me,” Kitamoto says, with an edge to his tone. “Did you bully him back then, too?”

“Please,” Natsume tries again, and he’s mortified. Nishimura doesn’t think he’s going to be able or willing to initiate eye contact for the rest of the day. And maybe it’s their fault, a little bit, but mostly it’s probably  _their_ fault – those jerks in the fancy uniforms, who think its okay to come to  _Natsume’s_ hometown and make him feel even for a second like he doesn’t belong. “It was a long time ago. They were kids, they didn’t know any better. It’s fine now.  _Please_ drop it.”

Tanuma is impossibly perceptive to all the nuances of Natsume’s moods, and when he relents, Nishimura and Kitamoto take it as their cue to let it go, too. Tanuma throws one last, dark-burning glance at the other group before he puts a hand on the small of Natsume’s back to guide him away. Natsume goes willingly, his face flushed with shame, and Kitamoto is quick to fall into step on his other side.

Nishimura lingers behind. He can’t help it.

“Leave him alone,” he says, feeling childish as he says it. His fists are clenched. He’s never been so  _mad._ “You don’t get to ruin this for him. He’s  _ours_ now.”

And with that, he storms off to catch up with his friends. And maybe he’s imagining it, but Natsume’s fat cat is purring a little louder than usual; looking at Nishimura like it heard what he said, dark eyes glinting in the afternoon sun with a light that looks almost like approval. 


	29. thanks, mom

Touko holds out his umbrella before he can leave, because the sky is dark and heavy with rain, and she’s always aware of things like this somehow. Takashi pauses at the door with Tanuma, and reaches back for the umbrella with a smile. 

“Thanks, mom.”

Takashi is halfway across the yard before his brain catches up to his mouth and he realizes  _what he said._ Tanuma is right next to him, dark eyes trained on his face – and there’s a hint of something that might be amusement in the corners of his mouth, but he’s very carefully not smiling.

Takashi stops walking. Swallows hard. 

“Did I really just – “ 

“You did.” Tanuma’s voice is gentle. “It’s okay, though. You should turn around.”

Even with Tanuma beside him, and sensei’s warm weight against his ankles, Takashi isn’t sure he’s brave enough to do that. But he’s stood here long enough that it wouldn’t make sense to just keep going without doing  _anything_. 

So he’ll apologize, he’ll tell Touko he didn’t mean it. She’s wonderful and kind and everything like the mother he never let himself dream about for too long at a time, but she never signed up for  _that._

Takashi spins on his heel, mouth open around a limping ‘sorry’, and – 

Oh. She looks happy. 

There’s a brightness in her eyes that spills over, and Takashi knows he put it there. He doesn’t know what to do with that knowledge.

“Make sure you call if you’re going to be late,” Touko calls, her voice wavering. “You know how much I worry.” 

She wipes her eyes and just beams at him, and somehow it’s the same look she gives him when he helps her with dinner, or brings the clothes in off the line, or gives her fresh wildflowers the chuukyuu helped him find. It’s been the same all along.

“Yeah,” Takashi says, surprised at himself. “I do.”


	30. sorry for the inconvenience

Satoru isn’t sure what’s going on, but he has the idea Natsume knows something the rest of them don’t. Even before the power went out, Natsume was tense and still; and now that it’s dark, his hands are folded into fists and his eyes are narrowed, he’s  _angry_ and not the least bit scared, and Satoru trades a glance with Kitamoto.

They aren’t stupid. Strangeness follows Natsume like a stray dog he fed from the back door once, it has from the moment he came to this boring country town. It’s  _strange_ , the way Natsume murmurs something unintelligible to his cat and sets it down, letting it waddle off down the dark hall, toward the source of a cold draft.

But you hear rumors, and Natsume tries so desperately to fit in. And Satoru may not be a very kind person, not in general, not to people he doesn’t really know, but he  _knows_ Natsume. Knows him as well as anyone could through all his secrecy and dishonest smiles, and at the end of the day Satoru has nothing to give him but kindness.

And it’s a first, but Satoru has come to understand that kindness comes in a lot of different shapes and sizes. Sometimes the nicest thing to do is follow an obvious lead, turn a blind eye, and smile.

“The storm must have kicked the power off,” he says blandly. “I’m sure it’ll come back on soon.”

Natsume smiles back at him, snatching up the threads of that story and sticking fast to it. Relieved, probably, not to have to come up with an excuse of his own. And then, because he wouldn’t be Natsume if he didn’t apologize for something that wasn’t his fault, he says, “I’m sorry it happened on your birthday, though.”

He’s sitting in the dark with two of his closest friends, the only thing between them and whatever malevolent force killed the lights and lured his cat down the hall, and he says ‘sorry for the inconvenience.’

One of these days, he’s going to tell them the  _truth_ , and on that day Satoru is going to shake him until all the sorrys fall out of his mouth and onto the ground where they belong. And then Satoru is going to tell him  _exactly_ what he thinks of Natsume doing everything alone, keeping them safe without ever thinking of himself. 

And then he’s going to say thanks.


	31. i like people like you

“What are you doing?”   
  
Tooru doesn’t yelp as she spins around, but it’s a close call. There’s a boy standing behind her, where there absolutely wasn’t a boy a moment ago, and she has no idea how he managed to sneak up on her so swiftly.  
  
She’s surprised enough to forget her self-imposed silence for a moment. “Where on earth did you come from?”  
  
He doesn’t smile, the wind blowing cloudy silver hair into his dark eyes. “I’ve always been here. What are you doing?” he asks again, and his gaze strays past her, to the diagram she’s just finished drawing in the dirt. “You’ve put these circles all over.”  
  
Tooru feels familiar dread settle on her shoulders like a heavy coat, and the face of that horrific monster she stumbled across looms in the front of her mind like the lingering footprint of a nightmare. She doesn’t have much time left.  
  
“It’s nothing,” she says shortly. “Just a game I’m playing.”  
  
The boy looks disapproving. “Dangerous game. What will you do if you lose?”  
  
Something about the way he says it has Tooru’s head up fast, her eyes flying to meet his. It should be impossible, but… “You— you know what this drawing is for?”  
  
“I figured it out,” he says simply, looking at the lines under his feet. “I wondered if you were an exorcist or a priest, but you’re someone just looking for trouble.”   
  
The unfairness of it brings heat to Tooru’s eyes. “I am not!”  
  
“If it’s a game to you—“  
  
“Of course it isn’t! I don’t want to be out here by myself, drawing these windows to see more monsters, but if I don’t—“   
  
And the words catch in her throat, a painful lump she can hardly breathe past, to think of the last thirteen people she called by name being killed, eaten by that scary creature that has haunted her for the past year.   
  
She lifts a shaking hand to her eyes, pressing back the tears that try to sneak out. There’s no time for this.   
  
“You’re running from something?” the boy asks. His expression is the same, but there’s renewed interest behind that placid mask.   
  
“I’m not running,” she says, and her voice doesn’t break. “I only have one day left before that thing finds me and the people I’ve cursed with me, and I can’t afford to waste my time.”  
  
To her surprise, the boy smiles.   
  
”I like people like you,” he says with real fondness. His eyes had seemed so dark at first, but Tooru can see the green in them now. “Explain to me what happened, please?”  
  
It’s peculiar to have this conversation so casually, like something out of a dream — but he’s safe from her as long as he’s nameless, and Tooru hasn’t had someone to talk to in what feels like a long time.   
  
So she talks to him. Each word feels like a weight off her heart, and when she’s finished, the boy nods.   
  
“I see,” he says. Then, absurdly, “Call my name.”  
  
“What?” Tooru feels a little slighted. “Weren’t you listening? If I do that, you’ll be cursed, too!”  
  
“Yes,” the boy says calmly. “And I’d like for your friend to come for me first. So don’t say any names after mine, okay?”  
  
Tooru’s grip tightens on the large stick she was using to draw. She says, “I can’t do that to you. What if you get hurt?”  
  
But even as she says it, it seems unlikely.   
  
He’s unruffled in face of her horror story and her yokai circles, believing and thoughtful in place of the skepticism that would have made for a much more human reaction. He didn’t see that creature that cursed her, he wasn’t there when that nightmare played out, but Tooru wonders if maybe this boy would have been a match for that monster somehow.   
  
Even if he can’t save her, it makes all the difference in the world to have someone on her side. For what feels like the very first time, Tooru hopes against her despair.   
  
Slowly she asks him, “What’s your name?”  
  
“I don’t give it away lightly, you know,” he says. “Will you take care of it?”  
  
“Your name?” Tooru asks, taken aback. She doesn’t know how she might misuse it even if she wanted to. “I— I’ll try. I’ll protect it, and you, and everyone else involved because of me.”  
  
For some reason, he smiles. How she ever could have thought his eyes were dark is a mystery, the way they’re shining under the orange evening sky.   
  
“Natsume,” he says, like a magic spell.   
  
”Natsume,” she calls him, and the moment feels more daring than it should. She feels a little silly for the way she’s holding her breath. “Oh! And I’m Taki Tooru,” she says, and offers a tentative smile. “It’s nice to meet you.”  
  
When the boy laughs, it softens him by a lot, until he looks like a classmate Tooru could have bumped shoulders with at school. “Go home,” he says kindly. “I’ll be waiting for you here.”  
  
Tooru feels like she might actually sleep well tonight, despite everything riding on tomorrow. She’s only taken a few steps when she takes a look back over her shoulder, but somehow the boy is already gone, and nothing but the yokai circle is left behind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you can never have too many yokai!natsume aus


	32. you deserve so much better

Satoru can still feel his mother’s stinging slap burning like a hand-shaped imprint on his face. He can’t even remember what he said to make her so mad. 

Kitamoto has this awful look in his eyes, all dark anger and hurt, and it prompts Satoru to say, “She can’t hit that hard.”

“That’s not the point,” his friend snaps. 

They’re sitting on the curb outside the convenience store, and Satoru is obediently holding a cold drink to his face while Kitamoto peels an antiseptic wipe out of its wax sleeve. 

“It’s hardly even bleeding,” Satoru tries again, poking the broken skin on his lip with the tip of his tongue. He cut it on his teeth when she hit him, but it’s barely a nick. Not worth all this trouble.

Not worth that look on Kitamoto’s face, or the careful way he’s touching him now. Satoru’s not something fragile, not something to be looked at softly or handled with care. He can’t sit still long enough for that.

“Nishimura?” a familiar voice says suddenly. “Kitamoto? What are you doing?”

Satoru yanks out of Kitamoto’s grip in his haste to turn around, and it hurts to grin with his lip and cheek so sore but he does it anyway, because it’s  _Natsume._  Natsume always gets his best and brightest smiles.   

“Hey! Pull up a chair,” Satoru says, patting the spot on the curb next to him invitingly. 

Bemused, Natsume does as he’s bid, settling there like an uncertain bird. And then his brows are furrowing in concern and his soft mouth is tugging down and he’s leaning a little closer to get a better look. 

“What happened to your face?”

“Two guesses,” Kitamoto mutters, “and if they’re aren’t his mom they don’t count.”

Satoru kind of hates what happens to Natsume’s expression at that, the way it close to crumples in dismay, and if he wasn’t angry at his mother already he’d be furious now. 

“It’s not like that,” he says. “She hardly ever does this.” 

It’s not the right thing to say, but he doesn’t know what the right thing  _is._ It feels more than a little strange to have this conversation with Natsume, who has never once talked about the places he came here from, but has enough shadows in his eyes and flinching tells for his friends to put the pieces together. 

Natsume has probably dealt with a lot worse than a slap in the face. Satoru hates himself a little bit when Kitamoto picks up his clumsy doctoring again, because Natsume didn’t have a Kitamoto back then, and he needed one more than Satoru ever has. 

“It’s not a contest,” Natsume says abruptly.  “Don’t – compare your hurt to mine. That’s not fair.”

He hasn’t moved but he feels somehow closer, as if the distance that’s always sat between them despite all of Satoru’s best efforts is lesser now.

“You’re important,” he says, so sincerely, this boy who keeps the strangest things guarded and is open and honest about everything else. Like no one ever told him what to keep close to his heart and what to hand out freely to the people he likes. “And you deserve so much better.”

But that’s the disconnect. That’s where Satoru misses some crucial piece of a greater understanding and flounders. 

Because he has Kitamoto, right beside him where he’s always been, still fussing over the torn corner of Satoru’s mouth with the antiseptic wipe. And he has Natsume, with those dreamlike eyes and that stubborn mouth, calmly being the kindest person in the whole world as he reaches over to pick up Satoru’s hand and hold it. 

And if he deserves them, it’s a miracle. 

He can’t imagine deserving any  _better._


	33. call me when you get home

“Hey,” Nishimura says suddenly, “who’s that guy with Nyanko-sensei?”

Kaname looks up, following his friend’s stare, and feels his blood run cold. Beside him, Natsume’s breath hitches and he staggers to his feet.

A shadowy man smiles at them from the opposite side of the road, long dark hair and strange patch over one eye. In his arms, Ponta is limp and wheezing. Natsume makes an aborted movement, torn between rushing close and keeping his distance. 

Kaname hears Kitamoto and Nishimura stand up, and the tension in the atmosphere isn’t lost on either of them. They’re both very quiet, and Nishimura's eyes are narrowed. 

“It’s fine,” Natsume says suddenly, “I know him. It’s okay. I’ll be right back.”

Nishimura looks like he wants to drag Natsume back by a handful of his jacket when Natsume moves away from them to approach the stranger, and Kaname understands the sentiment perfectly. 

“That guy looks like a kidnapper,” Nishimura hisses under his breath. “Why does he have Natsume’s cat?”

“Natsume said he knows him,” Kitamoto puts in, and Nishimura waves a hand sharply.

“Uh, Natsume says a  _lot_ of things? Are we gonna start believing him about everything  _now?_ He probably just said that so we wouldn’t freak out.”

Kaname tunes them out, straining to hear what Matoba and Natsume are saying. Natsume’s shoulders are stiff, and his hands are out – expectant, demanding – and Matoba is still smiling mildly when he hands Ponta over the way someone might hand a toy to a petulant child. 

Natsume hugs the lucky cat to his chest, and his indistinguishable words are sharp and angry, but it’s easy to see which way the wind is blowing. Matoba is winning the argument, whatever it’s about, and Kaname can’t see what Natsume’s face looks like, but he sees it when Natsume gives up. 

No, he thinks, hands curled into fists at his sides.  _No._

Natsume turns back to his friends with a smile, and calls over, “Nyanko-sensei isn’t feeling well. Matoba-san is friends with someone who might help, so I’m going to go with him, okay?”

“Don’t,” Kaname says, too loud, almost cutting him off. Matoba’s dark eyes cut into him, even from so far away, and Kaname abruptly feels cold. “I mean – Natsume, why don’t we just take Ponta home? You don’t have to go with him. We’re friends with people who can help, too.” 

For a moment, Natsume looks as though he might listen. His fingers are buried in Ponta’s fur and his eyes are round with want or maybe hope, but Matoba clears his throat and that fleeting moment is gone.

“It’s okay,” Natsume says again. “Nyanko-sensei will be fine. I’ll see you all after the weekend.”

Matoba puts a hand on his shoulder and leads him away, with a pleasant farewell to the rest of them, and Kaname’s heart hammers in his chest faster and faster for every step Natsume takes further away from him. 

He calls out, “Natsume!” and immediately, his friend stops and turns. As always, there’s too much distance between them for Kaname to be of any help. But he forces himself to smile, hopes he looks strong and unafraid, and says, “I’ll be waiting. Call me when you get home.”

Natsume says, “I will,” and he lingers for a second longer, like there’s something else he wants to say – but he settles for a brittle smile, and a quick nod in lieu of a wave. Then he climbs into the sleek black car waiting for him at the end of the road, and he’s gone. 

“Why do I get the feeling we’re never going to see him again?” Kitamoto asks of the silent spring air. 

“That’s not funny,” Nishimura says sharply. “Tanuma – did he really know that guy? Should we call Touko-san?”

 _Yes_ , he wants to say. Call the Fujiwaras and the police and child protective services and anyone else it would take to get Natsume away from that frightening man. 

But he knows Natsume would never forgive himself if his foster parents got involved with the Matoba clan – remembers Natsume telling him in a soft, scared voice exactly what Matoba had threatened to do once before. 

 _“I have to protect them from that,”_  he’d said, soft but not fragile, slender hands firm around Kaname’s own.  _“I have to.”_

So Kaname says, “No. Natsume knew him. He said it himself, it’s okay,” and tries not to feel like he’s betraying his friend by making sure no one will go after him. Makes up an excuse to leave and hurries home to find the address book with Natori’s number in it, places a frantic call on the house phone and leaves message after message on Natori’s answering machine until finally the man calls back. 

 _“I’ll take care of it,”_ Natori says tersely.  _“Thank you for letting me know.”_

And then all Kaname can do is sit in his empty house, while yokai fish swim in shadows on the ceiling and his heart aches with fear and frustration, and wait beside a phone that never rings. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sunday night, well after he should have been in bed, Kaname looks up at the sound of a quiet knock on the front door. His father is away for work, but might have come home early. Kaname pushes himself to his feet, crams his phone into his pocket, and makes for the entry way. 

"One moment," he says hoarsely, unable to work up any polite enthusiasm, and pulls the door open. 

On the step outside, Natsume smiles at him wanly, covered in what appears to be soot. Natori is behind him, equally as disheveled, and they both look like they're ready to just fall over and sleep wherever they land. Ponta is a comfortable bundle in Natsume's arms, purring noisily, his eyes narrow the way cats eyes are when they're content. 

Kaname stands in the doorway and stares at the odd group they make with what he can guess is a stupid expression. Somehow, though, it makes Natsume's smile grow a touch warmer. 

"Sorry I didn't call," he says ruefully. "We only just got back."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i added a little bit to the end of this one, because i really didnt account for how upsetting the original ending was when i posted it to tumblr, haha,,


	34. this is all your fault!

“Ugh,” Nishimura says with feeling, looking too disgusted with the world at large to articulate himself properly. “ _Ugh.”_

Atsushi is doing his best to take him seriously, he really is. Nishimura looks so  _bedraggled_ , like a cat that got left out in the rain, hair sticking to his face and clothes dripping where he’s wrestling his sneakers off in the genkan.

Mana rushed out of the room a minute ago under the guise of getting towels, but Atsushi’s pretty sure she only went because she couldn’t keep a straight face, either.

Tanuma is a better person than all of them. There’s a hint of a smile hiding in the corners of his mouth, but his voice doesn’t give it away when he says, with probably honest concern, “I hope you don’t catch cold. You should take a bath before we eat.” 

Nishimura opens his mouth to reply, and Atsushi can’t  _wait_ to hear whatever he’s about to say, but then he snaps it closed to whirl on Natsume instead. 

“That’s enough out of you! This is all your fault!”

“S- Sorry –”

“No you’re not! Look at you!” Nishimura scowls at the rest of them, waving a hand in Natsume’s general direction. “Look at him!”

Atsushi’s been trying not to, because he knows he’ll lose composure the second he does, but if Nishimura  _insists –_

And he tries to smother it behind his hand when he starts chuckling, sees Tanuma glance away as his shoulders start shaking, and Nishimura throws up his arms in defeat. 

Because Natsume can barely stand upright at this point, leaning on Tanuma for support. He’s been laughing since he and Nishimura got here, soft and unobtrusive but  _full,_ full in a way Atsushi has never seen him laugh before – right down to wheezing and hugging his stomach - and honestly it’s the most amazing thing that’s ever happened.

Looking at him laughing makes  _Atsushi_ want to laugh, and he’s not even sure what the joke is in the first place. 

“Yeah, yeah,” Nishimura grumbles, every bit as though he’s not enjoying every second of this, too. He’s supposed to be annoyed, but he isn’t very good at acting like it – helping Natsume out of his coat once he’s managed to get his own coat off, dumping the first dry towel over Natsume’s head before taking one for himself. “I’m just a big joke around here.”

Muffled from under the towel, Natsume says, “But you’re a really  _good_ one.”

Nishimura squawks, all ruffled feathers and offense, and it’s Atsushi’s turn to lean on something for support as he all but cries with laughter. 


	35. that hot coffee feeling

It’s been a year since Natsume came to this town. Satoru knows for sure, ‘cause he asked Tsuji, and Tsuji pulled the student records to check, and his first day at their school will have been a year ago tomorrow. 

So maybe not a year since he’s moved here, but a year since the day Satoru met him. And really,  _that’s_ the important thing. 

It’s already been a year, and it’s only been a year, and Satoru can’t believe how important Natsume is to him now. How much space in Satoru’s heart that he takes up. How much time in Satoru’s day that belongs to him, and his self-conscious smiles, and thousand yard stares, and the way his whole face lights up when someone surprises him into laughter. 

He’s  _already_ been here for a year, and he’s  _only_ been here for a year, and Satoru is torn between wondering how time could have gone by so quickly, and wondering how it feels like he’s known him his whole life at the same time. 

He asks Kitamoto, the way he asks Kitamoto all the hard questions, and Kitamoto shoves his shoulder amiably. “You love him, obviously,” his best friend says without even taking a minute to think about it. “You’re not an idiot, Satchan. You knew that already. Think it over.” 

Satoru rubs his shoulder with a wounded expression and thinks it over. 

His heart doesn’t start swooping around dizzily, and the world doesn’t fall out from under his feet, like it should at some grand revelation – he just feels warm, and full, like someone poured a can of hot coffee into his soul. It’s a feeling that should burn or scald him, but it doesn’t. It just sits there, and it’s heavy, and it’s familiar, and it’s warm.

“I guess I do,” Satoru says, surprised. “I love him like I love you. But I mean –  _how?_ ” 

Kitamoto shrugs, and doesn’t get a chance to answer before his mom is opening the apartment door and welcoming the two of them inside. Mana has more of those donuts she loves from that store nearby, and she picked one out for Satoru, too, and while Kitamoto’s mother despairs of the rest of them spoiling their dinner, and Kitamoto’s father laughs even as he reaches over to ruffle Satoru’s hair in welcome, Satoru feels that – that hot coffee feeling again. 

Kitamoto catches Satoru’s eye and nods back towards his bedroom. They end up on Kitamoto’s bed, cross-legged and getting crumbs everywhere. They have homework to do, but Satoru slumps over on his friend’s shoulder when his donut is gone and doesn’t make a single move toward his bookbag. 

“I love them, too,” Satoru says, since it seems like something he should say. “Your parents and your sister.”

“Obviously,” Kitamoto says again, not unkindly. “Why are you thinking about this, anyway?”

“‘Cause it’s been a  _year_ ,” Satoru tells him emphatically, but he still doesn’t know what he means by that. 

Natsume  _just_ got here, and he’s already – really special. He moved around so much before, Satoru knows that from all the rumors that followed him here, but the thought of him leaving Hitoyoshi and moving somewhere else fills Satoru with ice. So quickly after the warm feeling, it’s more than a little uncomfortable. 

“I guess,” Satoru hazards, “I just really wanna keep him.” 

“So tell him that,” Kitamoto says simply, the voice of someone who knows Satoru better than he knows himself most days. “Don’t just think about it over and over until you get sick. He’s probably at Tanuma’s, right? Call him.” 

“Do I have time before dinner?” Satoru asks, even as he’s pulling his phone out of his hoodie pocket. 

Kitamoto rolls his eyes. “Mom would let the rest of us  _starve_ before she started the meal without you.” 

Heartened by that, Satoru dials Tanuma’s cell. Natsume  _still_ doesn’t have one, even though the Fujiwaras keep trying to insist he should carry one, and Satoru’s pretty sure it’s because of how often he seems to fall into rivers and out of trees. A cellphone probably wouldn’t last long with him. 

He’s so weird, Satoru thinks fondly. 

 _“Hey, Nishimura,”_  Tanuma picks up after a few rings.  _“What’s up?”_

“Would you be mad if I said I just wanted to talk to Natsume?” Satoru asks gibly, still half-sprawled on Kitamoto. Satoru’s mom has said it’s rude to take phone calls with someone else in the room, but Kitamoto doesn’t care. He’s never sent Satoru away for anything he could do next to him. 

 _“Of course not,”_  Tanuma says dryly.  _“Then I’d just have to be mad at Natsume for not having a phone, and we both know that’s next to impossible.”_

Satoru laughs. Tanuma’s even newer than Natsume is, but he’s important, too. As important as Taki and Tsuji and Sasada and Adachi and Shibata are. How in the hell did all these people creep up on Satoru and take up so much of his life?

Tanuma must pass the phone over at that point, because Natsume’s soft voice fills Satoru’s ear in the next moment.  _“Nishimura?”_ he asks, always concerned first and amused second.  _“Is everything okay?”_

“’Course it is,” Satoru says, “I just realized something and I had to tell you right away.” 

“ _Oh_ ,” Natsume says,  _“well, okay. Tell me.”_

“Did you know it’s been a year since you’ve moved here?” Satoru blurts. “A whole  _year._ I made Tsuji check. It’s been – that long! Already!” 

There’s a brief pause, and Satoru worries for a moment that the point he’s trying to make has been lost on his friend, but then Natsume is breathing out slowly and saying,  _“Wow. I can’t believe it. It – doesn’t feel like it’s been that long? But – at the same time – “_

“I know right?” Satoru grins. “It feels like you’ve been here forever.”

 _“Yeah,”_  Natsume says, by way of agreement. His voice is quiet and careful. Kitamoto is silent, and Satoru holds his breath, because sometimes when Natsume talks it feels like the rest of the world is impolite just for making any noise that could drown him out.  _“It’s – the first time I’ve really felt at home anywhere. I hope I can stay here forever.”_

That’s not something Natsume should have to worry about. Satoru knows the Fujiwaras well enough at this point to  _know –_ they would fight hard to keep Natsume, harder than Satoru thinks his mom would fight to keep him. He may not have had home to start with, but he has one now. 

It’s been a  _year,_ Satoru thinks, and there’s still a measure of wonder, of hope, of doubt in Natsume’s voice. It shouldn’t be there. This should be something Natsume doesn’t  _have_ to wonder about.

“You’ll stay here for as long as you want to,” Satoru says decisively, “‘cause this is your home now. So you better want to stay for a long time, ‘cause I don’t want you going anywhere. You’re one of the most important things in my life, and it’s only been a year. Just think how much I’ll love you when it’s been  _two.”_

Natsume catches his breath. Beside him, Kitamoto sighs, but when Satoru sneaks a glance at him, he doesn’t look annoyed. He just looks sort of amused, and shakes his head at the question in Satoru’s eyes. 

 _“That’s one more good reason to stick around, then,”_ Natsume says, his voice oddly thick.  _“Not that I need another one, when I already have all of you.”_

 _“Nishimura,”_  Tanuma says when he takes back the phone,  _“thank you.”_

“Huh? What for?” 

But Tanuma just says goodbye after that, and the line goes dead, and Kitamoto is grinning at his laptop when Satoru lowers the phone. “You’re so dumb,” Kitamoto says, nothing but fondness in his face. “I love you so much.”

“There’s a lot of that going around tonight,” Satoru says, and can’t help grinning right back. 


	36. follow him anywhere

By the time he’s eighteen, Kaname knows a lot, but it took him a long time to get there.

He can’t even count how many late nights he and Taki spent camped in her grandfather’s study, all those long hours of reading handwritten journals, combing through a good man’s life work. Taking an impossible language apart letter by letter and rebuilding it into something they understood, until the symbols making up the yokai circles were as familiar to them as the kanji they learned in elementary school.

“There’s so much here,” Taki said once, hair piled up on top of her head, sleepless shadows under her eyes. But she was so bright, that day, her face a study in remarkable determination as she touched one of her grandfather’s books with reverent fingers. “Help me, Tanuma. I want to make him proud.”

“Of course,” Kaname said, covering her hand with his own. One of his very first friends and one of his very best. She looked up at him, and her expression melted into something warm. Her fingers wrapped around his and squeezed.

“You help everybody,” she said, not quite teasing. “Will he ever know how much you’re doing for him?”

There was no prudent way to answer her, and maybe Taki knew that, so they just sat in silence together, hands clasped comfortably between them.

 

* * *

 

Kaname shadowed his father more than a few times, learning from him how to purify, how to make talismans, how to speak words of power. Once upon a time priesthood was passed down from father to son, a hereditary profession, but there were no private practices anymore. Kaname didn’t think he would ever take the exam, make it official, but his father didn’t seem to mind. He wanted Kaname to be safe out there in the world, where dangers lurked that very few people knew to be wary of, and taught him what he could.

“I know you’ll follow him anywhere,” his father said, torn somewhere between fondness and worry. “And I know it will bring you as much hardship as it will joy. Take what you can from me, son, and use it how you will.”

Blinking through a sudden burn in his eyes, Kaname dipped his head in a nod. He was supposed to meet up with the others at Kitamoto’s house that night, but suddenly he wanted to stay home. These nights with his father were beginning to feel like a precious currency. This little mountain town wouldn’t be home forever.

 

* * *

 

He learned the most from Natori. Natori taught him the things their friend refused to learn, taught him how to exorcise, how to bind. He didn’t have a gift for the paper magic, but he kept at it doggedly, kept at it for years, like it was a talent he could better himself at if he tried, like learning piano or painting. The first time one of his charms worked, he smiled so widely it hurt, his heart lurching painfully in the pit of his chest, aching with something tiptoeing the line between pride and relief.

It was no secret why he was doing this. Who he was doing it for. It was probably the only reason Natori opened his door to him in the first place. Kaname was never going to leave his best friend’s side, not ever, and that meant maybe he was always going to live a little more dangerously, a little more recklessly, than he would have without him.

“You’ll do fine out there,” Natori told him, something like satisfaction in his eyes. “Hopefully, as long as you stick together, you both will.”

“Don’t worry,” Kaname said, brushing sweaty fringe out of his eyes. “He’s not going anywhere without me.”

 

* * *

 

Natsume isn’t a fool. He looks at Kaname, at his long hair pulled back into a functional tail and the clear-framed glasses on his face, and something happens to his expression that’s hard to look at. He stands there, hugging Ponta in his arms, stark worry and hurt and guilt and gratitude making a play for dominance in his wide window eyes.

“Tanuma,” he says, so softly, “you can’t keep doing this.”

Kaname smiles at him. Their suitcases are packed, and their new apartment is a few hours away by train, and university starts in two weeks. He’s got a bag hanging at his side, the strap secure across his chest, and in it is everything he needs to never be taken off guard again. 

He touches Natsume’s face, a careful press of his fingers to the curve of Natsume’s cheek. There in the unflinching afternoon sunlight, on the platform of the train station, in front of neighbors and former classmates and a gathering of ayakashi waving tearful farewells, the moment is bold and bright.

“I’ll be fine,” Kaname says, and looks at Natsume with all the love he feels. So much it should be impossible for one person to carry and hold. “And so will you.”

Natsume’s eyes get wet, his mouth trembles, even as he leans into Kaname’s hand. No one has ever done this for him before, Kaname knows. That only makes it all the more important. 

Ponta’s eyes are jewel-bright in the sun and narrow, the way a cat looks when it’s pleased. “Maybe some of your friends aren’t worthless after all, Natsume,” the lucky cat says. 

Natsume closes his eyes, still at war with some part of himself that doesn’t know how to take what Kaname is offering, but that’s okay. He’ll get there. He hasn’t pushed Kaname’s hand away yet. 

By the time he’s eighteen, Kaname has made his choice, and he’s comfortable with it.


	37. i can explain

They’re sitting on the shallow side of the river, at the spot where they usually fish, all of them soaking wet and with a new lease on life, when Natsume blurts, “I slipped.”

His eyes are wide. He looks hunted, standing there in the warm summer sunshine like he’s ready to bolt, and Nishimura shakes his head slowly. Looks at Atsushi as if to say ‘is this guy for real?’

There’s no way Natsume  _slipped_ six feet to one side and over a thicket into the water. Maybe Atsushi didn’t see what pulled him off the path, out from where he was standing between his two best friends, but he knows that something must have. 

It’s another one of those – weird instances. Maybe one or two they could look past or reason away, but at the rate odd things seem to happen around Natsume, in their otherwise peaceful (boring) country town, Atsushi would have to be an idiot to think it was just a series of coincidences. 

Strangeness has followed Natsume since the day he moved here – probably before then, too, if the rumors are to be believed – and Atsushi’s  _not_ an idiot. 

But he hates the look on Natsume’s face right now more than anything. 

So he rings out his shirt and says mildly, “Don’t worry about it, Natsume. It’s not the first time we’ve jumped into a river after you, and it probably won’t be the last.”

It’s an effort, on his part, to make that awful, stricken expression Natsume’s wearing go away. He can ignore the elephant in the room if Natsume can, even if it leaves Nishimura staring incredulously at them both, and they’ll shelf the inevitable discussion for another time. 

But Natsume leans forward, and something in his eyes has changed. He looks from Atsushi’s face to Nishimura’s, tentative, like the eye contact costs him something. There’s a burgeoning bravery taking root somewhere in the center of him. It’s the way he looks when he parts with another telling anecdote from the miserable places he came here from. 

The way he looks when he’s offering up a piece of himself that isn’t pretty, that he worries might make them turn away.

“If I tell you something weird,” he says, “will you promise not to call me a liar?”

“Weirder than ‘I slipped’ after something sent you flying?” Nishimura retorts, even rolling his eyes. “You’re gonna have to work to get weirder than  _that_.”

He says it so frankly that Atsushi is a little impressed, in the small part of his brain that isn’t horrified at his best friend’s lack of tact. But Natsume just goes on looking at them, summoning his nerve, and Atsushi has to add, “We’d never call you a liar, Natsume. Nishimura has picked fights with people for you for way less than that.” 

Finally, something warm and light dawns on Natsume’s face. And maybe it’s better that it’s been most of a year now and they’re only just having this conversation. Maybe it’s better, because there’s so much  _proof_ now – proof like that, like Nishimura taking up for him when someone else is less than kind – that Natsume can bring himself to believe it’s different here, it’s different this time.

“I can explain,” he says, still careful but no longer scared, and offers them both a hand up. “But lets go to my house first. Touko-san is making curry for dinner. And maybe by then I’ll figure out where to start.” 

Nishimura reaches out before he’s even finished talking, taking his hand and holding it tight, the way he refuses to be embarrassed about even at school. Atsushi, only a beat behind him, decides Nishimura has the right idea for once. 

He’s not going to let go, either. 


	38. did you know? i'm here to stay

It happens quickly. One minute, Nishimura is standing next to them, waving his hands and talking in a bright voice, and the next he’s – gone. 

Swept off his feet with a sudden yelp, and falling, and in another second he’s sprawled in a dazed heap at the bottom of the steps. 

“I’m okay!” he calls up when his friends cry out and rush down to him. “I must’ve, uh – tripped? Or something?”

He sounds confused and looks more than a little dizzy. He leans heavily into Tanuma’s side when the latter helps him up, and hisses through a wince when he tries to put weight on his right foot. 

“Thank god it was a short flight of stairs,” Kitamoto says, breathless with relief. Nishimura rolls his eyes, and sort of smiles despite himself, and they’re all ready to chalk the accident up to one of those odd happenstances that seem to dot their lives.

Until Natsume speaks from somewhere behind them, in a voice so cold it doesn’t even sound like his. 

“You think this is  _funny_?” 

Tanuma exhales shortly, like the air was punched out of him, and Kitamoto twists around to look back at his friend. 

Natsume is standing higher than the rest of them, four or five steps up from where Nishimura landed. His eyes are bright and furious, the wind picking fingers through his hair until it stands up like bristled fur. He’s as slight and pale as he’s always been, but somehow he’s standing differently, or the light is falling on his face differently, or Kitamoto has never seen him from this angle before. 

Somehow he looks dangerous. 

And he’s not looking at any of them when he speaks. 

“Yes, I can see you,” he says over their heads, every word measured, dripping with menace. “Imagine what else I can do?”

“Natsume?” Nishimura says in a small voice, but Tanuma presses down on his shoulder, and Nishimura shuts up. And a moment later, Natsume surges down a step, hands curled into fists, and his face is so transparent and so full of hurt that Kitamoto’s breath catches. 

“You could have  _hurt_ him!” Natsume says it loud, louder than Kitamoto has ever heard from him before, louder than when he gets scared or when he gets hurt. His cat is at his side, bristling, eyes a brighter green than they should be, and Natsume says, “Leave them alone, or I’ll let sensei do whatever he wants to you. Leave them  _alone.”_

And then a slight shadow Kitamoto hadn’t even noticed hanging over them is gone. It feels the way it does when a cloud passes over the face of a sun, and the whole day goes just a little bit dim, just for a little while, in such a small way you might not have noticed if you blinked at the wrong time. 

Natsume looks down at them, and his eyes are wet, and his expression is pained. He’s scared. Scared like – like they came close to danger just now, for all that it was just a clumsy little spill down some steps. Scared like he almost just lost them somehow. 

“Sorry,” he says quietly. His voice is shaking. So are his hands. “That was strange, wasn’t it? Sorry.” 

Nishimura is moving suddenly, hobbling toward the steps, like he forgot about his twisted ankle. He lists to the side after two steps with a wince, and Natsume surges down the rest of the stairs at the same time Kitamoto and Tanuma lunge over to catch him.

But he stays on his feet, and his face is twisted into a stubborn scowl, and he doggedly moves forward until Natsume is in arm’s reach. 

If Natsume looked scared before, he looks terrified now. But his arms are out anyway, in case Nishimura falls. He doesn’t shrink away when Nishimura reaches for him. 

Nishimura grabs him, and hauls him into a hug that looks like it hurts. He holds him hard, arms tight around his shoulders. Natsume freezes, hands hovering above Nishimura’s back, eyes wide.

“Something pushed me, didn’t it?” Nishimura says, muffled against Natsume’s jacket. “I felt it, like a hand on my back. Something was there, wasn’t it? And you made it go away. Don’t say  _sorry_ , Natsume. Don’t ever say  _sorry.”_

A weight against his ankle makes Kitamoto look down. Nyanko-sensei passes him on his way to Tanuma, and puts a paw on his leg in a proprietary fashion, and Tanuma bends to pick him up with a little laugh. 

Kitamoto stares at the cat. Its eyes are a darker green now. It stares back at him, like it’s daring him to say something. Kitamoto wisely chooses not to. 

In front of them, Natsume finally summons the nerve to hug Nishimura back. He winds arms around Nishimura’s waist, and his fingers dig into the fabric of Nishimura’s shirt, and he seems to fight a losing battle for a few seconds. 

Then he buries his face in Nishimura’s shoulder and starts to cry. 

“He isn’t crazy,” Tanuma says suddenly, softly, “if that’s what you’re thinking.”

Stung, Kitamoto snaps, “Of  _course_ not. He’s my friend, too.”

He has questions to ask – about a hundred of them – but he wouldn’t ask them if he didn’t think he could believe Natsume’s answers. 

Natsume is a little weird, and sometimes standoffish, and secretive about the strangest things, but Kitamoto wouldn’t be his friend if any of that bothered him. 

Tanuma looks apologetic, ducking his head. “You’re just – you’re looking at him funny.”

“Because I’ve never seen him  _do_ that before,” Kitamoto says, throwing up his hands. “Get mad like that! He even  _shouted!_ I’ve literally _never_ heard him shout. That was –  _that_ was – kind of amazing? And a little scary? And I’m just really glad he’s on our side, that’s all.”

“So – a mysterious force pushes Nishimura down the stairs,” Tanuma says, very slowly, “and Natsume can see something we can’t, and sends it away before it can hurt us – and the part you’re stuck on is  _he shouted at it_.”

Feeling distinctly like he’s being made fun of, Kitamoto deigns not to answer. 

He reaches out to sling his arms around his other two friends, drawing Natsume’s tear-stained face out of hiding. He still looks a little shaken – scared for a different reason, now, scared like there’s any chance his friends don’t still love him as much as they did ten minutes ago. 

Yeah,  _right._

“Let’s go to my house,” he says warmly. “Mom will be able to look at Satchan’s foot, and Mana wants to make us a cake ‘cause she missed your birthday, Natsume.”

“Why don’t we make it a sleepover!” Nishimura pipes up, predictably. “We can watch Natori’s new drama!”

Tanuma trades a long-suffering look with the cat he’s holding. Natsume looks like they’re all speaking a foreign language and he’s struggling to keep up. 

“And… we’ll talk?” he says quietly.

“If you want,” Kitamoto replies easily, meeting his eyes. “It doesn’t have to be right now. It’s not like any of us are going anywhere, right?”

Natsume’s hand curls hard into Kitamoto’s sleeve, and his mouth trembles, and for a second Kitamoto is terrified he said the wrong thing, made his friend cry, how is he supposed to deal with having made  _Natsume cry_ – but then, miraculously, Natsume’s smiling instead. 

“Right,” he says. He says it like it’s the best thing he’s ever agreed with. It makes Kitamoto smile back. 


	39. lucky to be here

“You need to stop wearing fancy clothes when you come visit,” Natsume says plainly as he wrings out his own shirt. “I mean, you’re just asking for it at this point.”

Shibata makes a show of sweeping his damp hair back so that it looks less like a bedraggled mop and more like he decided to wear it that way on purpose. 

“Sometimes I forget to account for near-death encounters when I dress to visit my friend in the country,” he says with false disdain. “You know, you’re the only person I’ve ever fallen off a bridge with? Isn’t that nice?”

It wins a small laugh from Natsume, a sound that escapes before he can help himself, and Shibata smiles smugly as they wade the rest of the way out of the water. 

Nyanko-sensei watches from his dryer perch with slitted eyes. Cats always smile, but this one is definitely laughing at them.

To be fair, he  _did_ scare off the yokai that pushed them from the bridge – but Shibata thinks he could have  _tried_ to catch them, at least. He can fly, can’t he? 

Natsume’s hair is a mess, dripping into his eyes and plastered to the back of his neck. His hands are out as though the air might be persuaded to catch him if he falls. He steps on a slippery rock and squawks when he almost looses his footing. His face turns slightly pink at the sound of his cat’s snickers from the riverbank, at the same time it wrinkles into a scowl. 

Shibata can’t help but feel fond of him. All his mannerisms are – a little strange, maybe, a little outside the ordinary – but out here in the dense forest at the bottom of the mountain, where Natsume seems to spend most his time, it’s as if the world reorients itself around him. The trees are talkative, and the river is lazy, and Natsume makes as much sense here as they do. 

Natsume’s friends are used to him, and the strange magic he wears like a winter coat. Shibata wants to be used to him, too. 

That night, laying in a futon next to Natsume’s in his bedroom, while moonlight pours through the window and insects gossip outside, Shibata whispers, “Are you awake?”

“Hmm,” comes the sleepy reply, which could be a yes or a no. 

“Do you remember when we were little?” Shibata asks, staring up at the ceiling. “When we went to the same school, and I was cruel to you?“

Natsume is quiet this time, but he moves; from his periphery, Shibata sees that dusty blond head tip over to face him, his eyes shining like Nyanko-sensei’s in the dark. 

“I was just thinking,” Shibata goes on, the quietest he’s ever been, “how impossible it is that we could be friends now. How lucky I am, that you – that you’re  _you_.”

Natsume’s confusion is so heavy it might as well be sitting next to them. “What does that mean? That I’m me?”

“You’re good, that’s all,” Shibata mutters, unable to explain it any better. “How many people would have talked to me, helped me, the way you did? I threatened to spread rumors, but Nishimura and Taki would have beat me up if I tried. That can’t have been the reason you did. It’s just – you. You know?”

Shibata can feel himself flushing. The inadequacy of the words is  _killing_ him, given how long this has been on his mind, how long he’s wanted to say it. 

Doggedly, he goes on, “And because of that, we can be friends now. I can come visit like this, and – and it’s nice, that’s all. You can go back to sleep now, I just wanted to – “ 

“You’re the only person who came back for me,” Natsume interrupts him to say. “It’s because you needed help, but still. You remembered me and the – the lies I used to tell, and you thought I could help you, and you found me. No one else has ever done that.”

His voice is warm and shaped like a smile. Looking at him now is something Shibata isn’t brave enough to do, but the smile is probably a nice one. 

“You think  _I’m_ the reason we’re friends,” Natsume says, in that soft, stubborn voice that could probably convince a mountain to move for him, “but we wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t showed up that day. It’s all thanks to you.” 

“Oh,” Shibata says, the only thing he can think of to say. For some reason his eyes are hot. “Um. Okay.”

“You really are lucky, brat,” Nyanko-sensei says into the silver-lined dark. “Don’t take it for granted.”

Shibata covers his eyes with his hand and waits until his voice won’t shake to say, “I know that, you stupid cat. Next time catch us when we fall or I’ll shave your tail.”

Nyanko-sensei squawks in outrage, and somewhere beneath that, Natsume muffles a laugh against his pillow, and Shibata  _knows_ he’s lucky to be here.

The  _last_ thing he’ll do is take it for granted.


	40. doesn’t hurt at all

Plenty of people have gotten angry or annoyed with him before, when they asked a question that Takashi couldn’t answer. There have been a lot of new schools, and new faces, and potential new friends, a lot of curious sidelong looks and harmless wondering about who he was, and where he came from, and what his family was like.

Takashi doesn’t mean to – to close doors in their faces. He never has. He would like to be open with them, to build a bridge between his classmates and the island he lives on, all alone, but…

But sometimes, he came to school with bruises. Sometimes he went hungry, or laid awake at night because he was afraid to sleep, and sometimes it wasn’t a yokai’s fault. And he can lie about the yokai, he’s lied about them since he was small, but somehow it was never as easy to lie about the people.

His classmates feel slighted those times he doesn’t answer their questions. Distance folds open in their faces, they take on a colder edge, they say something like “I was just _asking_. I won’t anymore.”

But that’s not – that’s never what Takashi wanted.

He would talk about it if he _could_. If he knew how. If he wasn’t still scared, in a younger corner of his heart, of those people that hurt him more than spirits ever have. He shouldn’t still be scared, it’s _stupid_ – he’s grown up now and far from the places he came here from – but he can’t help the way he sometimes wants to curl up into something smaller when someone raises their voice in the supermarket, when kids at school crowd around his desk; the way his instinct is to flinch when Shigeru or Touko reach for him without warning, even though he manages not to most times. It’s _stupid_ , that he could still have bruises on his soul like that. That he hasn’t gotten over it yet.

And he loves Hitoyoshi in a way he’s never loved any place before. He loves his school and his classmates and his foster family, and the want to keep them, to keep this goodness he’s found, _burns_ in his chest like the desperation that keeps him running even when he’s out of breath and exhausted. He wants so badly to keep living here. He doesn’t want to give anyone a reason to want him gone.

So when Suzuki, a girl in his class, turns to him with a smile and a curious look on her face that Takashi recognizes, he smiles back through the chill that settles in his lungs.

“Of course,” he tells her when she asks the inevitable question, “ask me anything. I don’t mind.”

Nishimura sits up straight, the box lunch Kitamoto’s sister made him all but forgotten in his lap. Tanuma and Taki’s unobtrusive conversation tapers off into silence. Even tactful Kitamoto is watching him with sharp eyes. Suzuki doesn’t seem to notice, leaning in brightly.

“Oh! Good! I was just wondering – I’ve heard you move around a lot, you know? Why is that?”

“My parents died when I was young,” he says, as lightly as he’s able, so she doesn’t feel bad for asking. “After that, I lived with relatives.”

Suzuki looks stricken. “Oh, I’m so sorry. That’s awful. Were you _very_ young? It’s just, my aunt works in child services, and she says the younger children get snatched up much more quickly than the older ones do. I wonder why it took you so long.”

And Takashi is very sure his expression doesn’t change. He’s good at that. He feels cold, but he doesn’t give it away even as his mind goes spinning back to the time an attentive middle school teacher called in the bruises on his arm – the time a police man found him wandering late at night and escorted him home, kind face wrinkling when he saw none of the lights were on and no one was waiting up – the time he fainted in PE when he was eight, because they always forgot to feed him –

He wrestles himself back. Tells himself _get over it, it’s time, it’s_ past _time to get over it._

“Bad luck, I guess,” he says, just wryly enough that Suzuki returns his half-smile with a slightly guilty one of her own, but that’s all he has time to say. Nishimura is shoving his bento into Kitamoto’s hands and standing, hooking a proprietary arm around Takashi’s elbow and hauling him upright, too. It grinds the conversation to a halt much faster that Takashi’s bad manners ever have.

“Lemme steal this guy for a minute,” he says to Suzuki without looking at her, and it’s a blessing she’s from their homeroom, because Nishimura is often hauling Takashi off with him and it doesn’t faze her in the slightest.

“Nishimura?” he asks, when his friend shoves him into an empty classroom. He blinks when the rest of them file in behind, when Taki slides the door shut with something weighted and awful in her eyes. The chill in his chest gets worse. “What is it?”

“Hey,” Tanuma says, stepping in. His face is so gentle, the way it always is, and he touches Takashi’s shoulder with a hand that isn’t built to touch anybody any way but kindly. “It’s just us, Natsume, don’t look so worried.”

And that’s – that’s fair. But –

But Nishimura still has a grip on his arm like he’s thinking thoughts of strangling something. He looks furious, and he hasn’t looked this angry since he was _possessed_.

“What the hell was she thinking?” he bites out. “Wait till Tsuji’s gone to ask a bunch of personal questions, _sure_. Wait till I tell him – “

“Nishimura,” Kitamoto says at length.

“And _you_ ,” he goes on, rounding on Natsume, “what the hell were _you_ thinking?”

Takashi has no idea what he’s upset about. He was talking about it, wasn’t he?

He glances over Nishimura’s shoulder at Taki and Kitamoto, glances sidelong at Tanuma, and doesn’t find any clues there. They all just look back at him, very much like if Nishimura wasn’t yelling then one of them would be, and that’s not a comfort.

“When she asked you that stuff back there,” Nishimura says fiercely, “you didn’t want to answer. So why did you?”

Takashi blinks rapidly. “It’s not that I – I don’t _want_ to – I just – “

“Can’t,” Tanuma finishes for him.

“I don’t know how,” Takashi says helplessly, shrugging one shoulder. Standing here alone with his friends, the coldness is abating. It’s easy, with them. Even the half of the group that doesn’t know his most carefully guarded secret are the two other people he would trust with it. It’s easy to say, “It’s hard to talk about, but I want to. I want it to be easy, I want it to be _over_.”

It’s not fair that he still has bruises.

Nishimura’s grip on his arm gentles, and slips down to his hand, where it squeezes tight again.

“If you don’t want to talk about it then say so,” Nishimura says. He’s an inch or so shorter, but the way he looks at Takashi makes him seem tall. “Don’t lie and pretend to be fine when you clearly aren’t. Don’t – you don’t owe anybody anything, Natsume. Don’t act like you do.”

“If you _do_ want to talk about it,” Taki puts in, earnest and sweet, “then try talking to people you trust first. Try talking to Touko-san or Shigeru-san, or one of us. It’ll be easier.”

“It shouldn’t be this hard,” Takashi mutters, staring down at the floor. “It was so long ago.”

“Doesn’t matter.” Kitamoto bumps his arm amiably, the second real friend Takashi ever made, as steady and reliable as he’s always been. “You got hurt, and you never really got better. It’s like getting sick and not going to the doctor. You get used to moving around with a cough or an ache and it becomes your new normal.”

“But it’s not normal,” Tanuma adds softly. “And it’s not your fault.”

“So this is just you going to the doctor,” Nishimura says. He takes Takashi’s other hand, too, and stands there holding them like it makes perfect sense. “This is you taking care of yourself for a change.”

Takashi can’t look at any of them, but not for the usual reasons. He doesn’t know what to say, but they don’t seem to mind.

“I’ll try,” he says, and looks up when Nishimura’s hands tighten around his in time to see them all smile.

Plenty of people have gotten angry or annoyed with him before, when they asked a question that Takashi couldn’t answer. There have been a lot of new schools, and new faces, and potential new friends, a lot of curious sidelong looks and harmless wondering about who he was, and where he came from, and what his family was like.

This is the first time anyone has guarded his silence. The first time he tried to speak despite himself and found himself kindly shut down. It’s not something he ever expected to find, but it’s something he has.

He smiles back, and it doesn’t hurt at all.


	41. a happy ending

“Okay I can’t do this,” Nishimura blurts maybe ten minutes after Kaname turned the lantern off. “There’s no way I’m sleeping now.”

“Seconded,” Kitamoto pipes up immediately. “Thank god.”

Natsume sits up, looking concerned. “Do you want to hold Nyanko-sensei?”

“Natsume,” Nishimura says very seriously, turning to look him in the eye, “it’s really sweet of you to offer. And I’m grateful. But no, I don’t want to hold your cat.”

“Is this because of the ghost story I told earlier?” Natsume asks, his voice small. “I didn’t mean to upset you. I thought you wanted to hear something like that.”

Immediately, guilt steals across Nishimura’s pale face, and he’s distracted from himself long enough to say, “I mean—we did ask you for a scary story, but—“

“Tanuma, how are you not freaked out?” Kitamoto demands.

Kaname rubs a hand through his hair, more sleepy than anything. The story Natsume told was a watered-down version of a yokai encounter Kaname was present for, so it lost a lot of the effect it might have had otherwise.

“I’ve heard that one before,” he says, and yawns.

“Don’t you dare go to sleep,” Nishimura yelps, fumbling to turn the small light back on. “We’re in this together!”

Ponta grumbles and crawls under Natsume’s blanket. Kaname stares after him enviously.

Then Natsume says, “Um—I didn’t really finish the story, you know.”

“There’s more?” Kitamoto squawks, outright horrified. “I don’t wanna hear it!”

“But I never told you why the ghost was haunting that girl in the first place,” Natsume says. And his face is soft in the low light, and his voice is warm, and it’s hard to reconcile him with the boy that made Nishimura cry half an hour ago. “It’s actually a love story. I just didn’t think you’d be interested in that part.”

Nishimura blinks, strung along by Natsume the way he always is. “Does it have a happy ending?”

It doesn’t. Kaname was there.

But Natsume smiles and says, “Would you like one?” and his friends clamor forward eagerly, earlier fear all but forgotten.

And Kaname lays awake to listen, too.


	42. you can tell me the truth

Walking home from the convenience store, Atsushi catches sight of Natsume sitting on an out-of-the-way curb, that fair hair sticking out like a beacon in the fading daylight, that ugly cat unmistakable. Grinning, he calls out to him, and Natsume lifts his head.

And the thing is, Atsushi considers himself a pretty patient person. He has to be, with a best friend like Nishimura. As much fun as it is to be rowdy and noisy, he knows how to keep a level head when it matters.

He can feel that composure fraying now, quicker than it ever has.

Because Natsume’s eyes stare owlishly out of a bruised face, the whole of him battered and torn. His shirt is loose along the collar like someone grabbed him there, the knees of his jeans are scuffed, he’s covered in dirt and grass, there’s a leaf in his hair—

“Hello, Kitamoto,” he says absurdly, like he can’t think of why Atsushi would be running the distance between them.

Atsushi hovers for a moment, unsure of where to touch him. “Natsume, are you okay? What happened to you?”

Understanding turns a light on in Natsume’s eyes, and he looks down at himself as if he’d forgotten what he looks like.

“Oh,” he says. He sounds tired. “I fell.”

The frantic worry erupts into something close to anger, and Atsushi kneels in front of him with the look he saves for Nishimura at his most self-destructive. He picks up Natsume’s hand, where a bruise shaped like fingers wraps around his wrist.

“You don’t have to protect them, whoever it was,” he says fiercely. “You can tell me the truth. I’ll believe you, I swear. Who did this?”

Natsume’s lips are parted in surprise. There’s something soft in his expression it’s hard to look at, impossible to name, and after a long moment he turns his hand to hold Atsushi’s properly.

And even though his mouth is torn at the corner and it must hurt, he smiles.

“They’re gone now,” Natsume says very carefully, like he’s giving up a part of his heart to say it. “They won’t hurt anybody anymore.”

Atsushi searches his face for another lie, but that seems to be the truth. Still, his heart is jumping in his chest and he can’t seem to let his friend go just yet.

He takes a deep breath, trying to find his footing, dragging back his composure.

“Let me walk you home,” Atsushi demands when he’s certain his voice won’t shake. He stands up, pulling Natsume up with him, and adds, “Gimme your bag, I’ll carry it.”

Natsume hands it over, and his cat tracks the motion with its strange green eyes, the way a hawk might watch a rabbit. Atsushi pulls it over his shoulder and Natsume says, “Between you and Nyanko-sensei, I must be the safest person in town.”

Atsushi scoffs. “I’ll do a way better job of looking after you than that cat does.”

For some reason, Natsume is laughing when Atsushi reaches for his hand this time. It makes the bruises on his face lesser, somehow. It takes away some of that painful weight on Atsushi’s chest, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [here](http://taizi.tumblr.com/post/178141621389/everyone-pointing-out-natsume-sounds-like-hes) is where we joke on tumblr about natsume’s friends helping him get away with actual crime


	43. this is going to hurt

Shuuichi gazes down at the troublesome boy he’s come to care for and despairs.

“Touko-san is going to have my head when I bring you home,” he says mildly.

Natsume, looking up from his almost certainly broken ankle, raises his eyebrows.

“Touko-san?” he says in obvious disbelief.

“She’ll kill me with kindness,” Shuuichi elaborates. “It will be slow and it will be brutal. And it will be entirely your fault.”

The child _rolls his eyes_. “Excuse me for saving your life. If I’d known it would cause you so much trouble I would have just let the yokai kill you.”

“Let’s not be over dramatic,” says Shuuichi, and Natsume’s expression says very clearly that he wishes Shuuichi would choke on that piece of hypocrisy. “It wouldn’t have killed me. Maimed me, perhaps. Which is far preferable to taking you home injured and facing the caring, good-natured wrath of your mother.”

“Will you just help me up please?” Natsume says _just_ this side of patiently, lifting his hands. “It’s a long walk back, and I want to get started before you work up to a monologue.”

Shuuichi steps over agreeably, but he hesitates to take the boy’s hands. “This is going to hurt.”

“Natori,” Natsume says. “It’s a sprain. I’ve had worse. Up, please.”

Oh, but he’s a proud little thing. Shuuichi bites back what he would like to say — that Natsume has no business getting hurt now, and he had no business getting hurt then, and it’s truly a crime that he did — and instead takes his outstretched hands and hauls him carefully upright.

Predictably, Natsume staggers. Hiiragi surges closer, as if to catch him, but he waves her off with a tight smile. “I’m fine,” he says, with pale good humor, “it just — hurts.”

Shuuichi tries to be subtle about taking most of Natsume’s weight as they walk. Truthfully he would carry his young companion — or ask one of the shiki to carry him — if he didn’t know for certain it would take a knock-down, drag-out argument for Natsume to even consider it.

“Of all the days for your little monster to stay home,” he muses as they make their mincing way back out of the wood and toward town. The footpath gives way to a dirt road, and the lotus fields bloom rich and purple on all sides, and the mountain air is fresh and sweet. It makes Shuuichi feel nostalgic, of all things. “He’s going to bite my face off when he sees you. I’ll never hear the end of it.”

“No one is going to bite your face off,” says Natsume in a measured tone Shuuichi has heard mothers use on their whining children in grocery stores. “I twisted my ankle. If I tape it well they might not even notice.”

Before Shuuichi can begin to unpack everything wrong with that statement, they’re accosted by twin cries of “ _Natsume_!”

Two boys rush toward them from the end of the road, their bikes discarded so quickly the upended wheels are still turning.

“Nishimura,” Natsume says by way of greeting, an involuntary smile forming on his face, “Kitamoto. What are you doing out here?”

Shuuichi has met Nishimura once before, a surprise orchestrated by Natsume on Nishimura’s birthday last year that left him almost in tears. Today there isn’t an ounce of idol worship in the boy’s eyes when he snaps an accusing glare Shuuichi’s way and says, “Why is he limping? What happened?”

“Is it your ankle?” Kitamoto adds, reaching for him. “You shouldn’t walk on it, Natsume.”

“I fell,” Natsume lies easily. “But I’m okay.”

“Yeah, yeah, you’re tough as nails,” Nishimura says impatiently. “You can fall off bridges without drowning and walk around on a busted ankle without passing out. That doesn’t mean you _should_.”

Both teenagers barely spare Shuuichi a glance as they fall into what appears to be a familiar role — they bully and cajole until Natsume agrees to a piggyback ride the rest of the way into town, without the battle of wits and willpower it would haven taken Shuuichi. Kitamoto carries him, and Nishimura pushes one of the bikes, and Shuuichi finds himself pushing the other.

Nishimura glances at him sidelong. Shuuichi doesn’t know what to expect.

“Your life is over the minute Touko-san sees him,” the boy says plainly.

“Oh yeah,” Kitamoto pipes up, “it’s gonna be brutal.”

“That is exactly what I said,” Shuuichi replies, smiling through a mild sense of dread. “Your friends are very wise, Natsume.”

Nishimura looks pleased pink, and that’s endearing. Natsume looks surprised, and that’s not.

His friends dropped everything to carry him home, they’re in complete agreement that his foster mother is going to have a big reaction the moment they step over the threshold, Hiiragi hasn’t moved more than three steps from Natsume’s side since he was injured, his stupid cat is going to kick up a huge racket and never let Shuuichi live it down—

and Natsume has the gall to say, “But it’s not a big deal.”

“Shut up,” Nishimura says, not unkindly. “Yeah it is.”

“She won’t get mad,” Natsume stresses.

“She totally will,” is Kitamoto’s cheerful contribution.

“Natsume,” Shuuichi says, as gently as he’s able, when Natsume curls his hands into Kitamoto’s jacket and just looks lost, “it’s not a bad thing.”

 _She cares_ , he would say, if he could think of a way to say it that Natsume would understand. _We care._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> now with more certified big bro natori


	44. why are you shaking?

There’s a meteor shower starting in the next hour, and Tooru is going to watch it with her best and closest friends.

It’s a school night, but they’re staying out late anyway, with plans to sleep over at Tanuma’s house and head to school together in the morning. Natsume’s cat is snoring in Tanuma’s lap, and similarly Nishimura has nodded off against Natsume’s shoulder a few times, and that prompted Kitamoto and Jun to make a run to the nearest conbini for some coffees to keep them all awake. 

Tooru stretches her legs out, content down to her bones. 

“You look happy,” Natsume says, and she beams at him. 

“Of course I am,” she says. “This is so fun!”

“It hasn’t even started yet,” Tanuma puts in, glancing up at the sky. 

“Not _that,”_ she insists stubbornly. 

They’re alone in a field away from the noise and faint light pollution of town, a spot Natsume’s friends among the yokai helped him find, and if she were by herself it wouldn’t be comfortable at all.

But she’s here with her favorite people in the world, so she can’t help the smile unfolding across her face.

“Hey,” Nishimura pipes up suddenly, making Tooru jump a little– she thought he’d dozed off again. “Natsume, why are you shaking?”

“It’s a little cold,” Natsume says defensively. 

“Touko-san told you to bring an extra coat!”

“It’s not _that_ cold! Nishimura– oh my god, stop, get _off.”_

Nishimura looks wide awake for a boy who yawned the whole way here, flashing Tanuma and Tooru one of his brightest smiles, his arms wrapped around a struggling Natsume’s thin waist. 

“Come help me warm this guy up. If he catches cold, we’ll never get to take him out again.”

“Oh, that’s true,” Tanuma says, trying not to smile at the look of betrayal Natsume is shooting him. He maneuvers Nyanko-sensei up into the crook of his arm and says, “Taki?”

“Of course,” she replies primly, and they sandwich Natsume and Nishimura between them snugly. Natsume looks like he doesn’t know whether to be touched or annoyed, but considering the strength he’s used to fend off mean ayakashi, he’s not putting up as much of a fight as he could. 

Kitamoto and Jun find them that way a few minutes later, and their eyebrows shoot up. Kitamoto is quick to join in, all but throwing himself on the top of their comfortable pile, while Jun rolls her eyes and passes out coffee. Her fingers overlap around Tooru’s when Tooru takes a cup, and the touch lingers, and so does Jun’s smile. 

It’s a cold night, but Tooru has never been so warm. 


	45. nice to know

Kaname wakes up to the feeling of fingers in his hair. Someone is stroking the sweaty fringe out of his face, their hand cool against Kaname’s hot skin, and he turns his head toward the touch.

“Tanuma?” Natsume’s quiet voice drifts by. “Are you awake?”

“Mm,” he manages. “I don’t know.”

“Can you try to drink some water?”

It sounds like Natsume would really like for him to try to drink some water. Kaname begins the arduous task of sitting up.

An arm slips around his shoulders, bracing him. It’s not Natsume, who is still a steady presence on his other side, and Kaname is too tired to wonder who else it could be.

“Here, Tanuma,” Natsume says, and guides Kaname’s hands to hold a cool glass. He even helps him drink, which Kaname doesn’t have the presence of mind to be embarrassed about. He’s mostly focused on completing this task so his friend will let him lay down again.

“Natsume,” he mutters when the water is gone, listing into the arm of whoever’s holding him, “my head hurts. Is it a spirit?”

Someone makes a surprised noise, but Natsume’s voice is clear and calm. “No, it’s just a bad fever. Your father went to get you medicine. He’ll be home soon, and you’ll be okay.”

He wants to believe that, but his head hurts so much—it can’t be anything other than yokai, not when it hurts this much. Which means he needs to stay awake, needs to be present and alert for Natsume’s sake….

But already sleep is wrapping its heavy hands around him, dragging him back down.

“Don’t get into trouble until I wake up,” he says firmly. “Don’t go anywhere without me.”

“I promise,” Natsume says.

“He sure told you,” says the person holding Tanuma, and he falls asleep while they’re still lowering him back into bed.

The next time he wakes up, the migraine is gone and his father is kneeling over him with a look of relief.

“There you are,” the priest says warmly, helping him sit up. “How are you feeling?”

“Much better,” Kaname says, rubbing his face. “I was sick?”

“Very sick. You took a turn for the worse last night and I had to run into town to find a doctor. I’m so grateful Takashi was here to keep an eye on you while I was gone.”

He gestures, and Kaname turns to find his best friend deeply asleep on a guest futon, Ponta dozing in the crook of his arm, pale face slack and peaceful.

The sight of him makes Kaname smile. 

“Who else was here?” he asks. “I heard them talking. Was it Nishimura?”

“There was no one here but Takashi,” the priest says. “You must have been dreaming.”

Kaname considers that as his father leaves the room, his gaze straying back to Natsume. As if sensing the scrutiny, Ponta opens one eye and stares back at him.

“Was there someone else?” he asks. The lucky cat scoffs.

“What do you think?”

“Were they nice?”

“For a weakling, they weren’t so bad. They liked your fish pond.”

Kaname laughs, the sound coming soft and scratchy out of his sore throat. It’s nice to know Natsume had help. And he’s still here, where he promised to be.

Kaname lifts his eyes to the familiar shadows swimming on the ceiling and says, “I’m glad.”


End file.
